The expansion will allow the 35-year-old specialist nursery, the first to succeed in propagating the palms commercially this way, to double capacity and export 300,000 plants annually by 2022. “We are the go-to provider of world class date palms, made in Britain and Brexit-proof as clients are outside the EU,” says DPD’s managing director, botanist Dr Avril Brackpool. Those customers in 25 countries now extend beyond the traditional Middle East to Africa, Australia and South America as climate change has increased awareness of the palms’ capabilities to thrive in high temperatures and tolerate salty soils.
They are now being used to combat land turning to desert, for reclamation, restoration and biofuels.
DPD employs 50 and has policy of where it is able to use local materials and manufacturing such as its ceramic pots. Its location, once the home of landed gentry keen on growing exotic plants, has proved the perfect place for date palm production.
Too cold for the palms to flower outside, the UK is free of the usual diseases affecting them.
DPD’s propagation methods also avoid the variabilities and lower yields associated with growing from seed, producing palms of consistent quality and traceable, pest-free certified origin, each with their own DNA fingerprint.
After export to their destination plots it takes the palms just three years or so to bear fruit.
Investment has come from the business’s parent Atul Ltd in India which bought it in 2011.
DPD is now helping it in its joint venture with the Government of Rajasthan and Atul’s subsidiary Floras to develop a sustainable date palm industry in India.
www.date-palm.co.uk