About Haygrove

Princess Anne with Angus and Cristi Marmandui

Princess Anne being introduced to the Tunnels Team

Princess Anne helped in planting a Quercus shumardii Oak Tree 

 

to mark her visit and Haygrove’s 25th Anniversary

Royal visit to Haygrove
Some special news this month. In February we enjoyed a visit from Her Royal Highness (HRH) Princess Anne. For those of you less familiar with the British Royal Family, Princess Anne is the daughter of the Queen and is famous in the UK for her charitable work, her appearance in the 1976 Montreal Olympics (winning two silver medals) and her tireless work carrying out more Royal engage-ments than any other member of the Royal Family.

Haygrove was specifically selected for a Royal Visit due to our development work in Africa. The Princess was keen to understand why a commercial company, such as Haygrove, is engaged in trying to help with poverty alleviation in Africa. To this end, the day showcased our partnership with charity Concern Universal, our work in the Gambia with the GiG (Gambia is Good) project and the wonderful Bright Futures programme at Haygrove Heaven.

The Princess also had the opportunity to get an insight into Haygrove Tunnels – specifically we focused on the strategic value of field scale tunnels for some of the big issues facing our planet. As we all know these big issues include feeding a growing world popula-tion, growing crops more local to market and so cutting down food miles, reducing pesticide usage and growing fresh produce in the face of climate change. A great story to tell!

New Home Production Unit
An important focus for the Royal Visit was also the unveiling of our Home Production Unit for emerging farmers. Rolly and the team have completed the development of the unit which we will sell boxed and de-livered in two pre-set sizes – an 8m x 15m and an 8m x 30m unit.
The units are designed to help lift subsistence farmers who currently might be growing just staple crops (sorghum, rice, maize etc) and enable them to grow crops (tomatoes, peppers, green beans etc) to enter the cash economy.

The new Home Production Units come complete with a pre-galvanised steel frame, perimeter anchoring system using solo anchors and cables, a woven laminated long lasting cover and netted ends to provide good ventilation combined with whitefly and thrip control. We will send out more technical, pricing and product details shortly.

We are delighted to say that we have our first order for 7 units for three different customers in the Gambia. These will be shipped next month and we are excited to let everyone know that Rolly Whatton and Darya Nefedova (from our accounts department) will be travelling to the Gam-bia to train the growers on how to build and manage the tunnels, work with the GiG team to help in developing the project and come back to the UK to inspire us all about this terrific work.