Christian Salvesen

Christian Salvesen

Christian Salvesen Foods are one of Europe's biggest food processing companies, handling a wide variety of vegetables grown in the surrounding fens. For instance, their factory on the Cherryholt industrial estate in Bourne receives the pea crops from 31 local farmers and at the height of the season, 25 acres a day are being harvested to keep pace with production. Each acre produces an average of 1.7 tonnes and a normal daily schedule will mean a production total of 420 tonnes with a seasonal total of 14,000 tonnes.

Similar operations are mounted when other vegetables are ready for harvesting including green and broad beans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots, swedes and parsnips, where these vegetables are frozen for onward transmission to the packers. They are cleaned and finally selected in a continuous production line that eventually ends in them being packed into huge one-tonne cartons that are then stacked in massive, temperature-controlled cold stores ready to be moved by refrigerated truck to the various packaging plants at a moment's notice.

During this process, they are steam blanched and the latest technology is employed to take out any vegetables that have any defects so that the company's rigid quality control ensures that only the very best of the crop is included in the final selection.

For this reason, most of the frozen peas and other vegetables that you eat are likely to have come from Christian Salvesen. They have a turnover of £50 million and employ some 16,000 staff, operating 200 sites in eight countries, and have become the largest processors of frozen green vegetables in the United Kingdom where their customers include Birds Eye Wall's, the Co-operative Society, Somerfield, Tesco and Waitrose.