AN investment of €10 million by Keelings Group in north Dublin will create 100 additional jobs at the group’s fruit growing enterprise.

The investment, in a glasshouse at Keelings, St Margaret’s, Co Dublin, facilitates the extension of the Irish strawberry harvesting season right through to December, creating an additional 100 seasonal jobs in the process.

Keelings is the only strawberry grower to have taken such a significant step forward, a group statement said.

The group has been involved in growing berries since the 1940s. Over the last 35 years its primary activities have been growing, sourcing, shipping, marketing and distributing fresh produce from around the world to Irish, British and European markets.

The group is family owned and family run with sales in the region of €350m and employs 1,862.

David Keeling said: “Traditionally, the strawberry season was from the beginning of May to the middle of October. Now, through an investment in this state-of-the-art glasshouse, we have been able to extend the season by another two months and provide fresh strawberries for the Irish market into December”.

It means the group will now produce 6m punnets, more than 100m strawberries each year, giving it 50% of the Irish strawberry market, he said.

The new glasshouses are among the most energy efficient in Europe and are therefore environmentally friendly, he said.

Under the process the carbon dioxide produced from the burning of gas for heating is returned to the glasshouse and used by the crop.

Rain water is also captured from the roof of the glasshouse and stored in reservoirs to water the crop and all the growing medium is from renewable resources.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, November 02, 2009