We would like to introduce Dragons Garden Ltd - The only Western-owned farming and processing organisation in Shandong
In 2000 Berry Ltd, together with our Chinese partner Flying Dragon Ltd, established the joint venture farming and processing company Dragons Garden. Dragons Garden is located in Yifengdian near Qingdao, Shandong Province, China. Berry Ltd is the majority shareholder, financier and marketing agent for the joint venture.
We pride ourselves on the systems and processes we have in place to ensure that the quality of our products is never compromised. If you are looking for a reliable, hardworking and trustworthy packer skilled at supplying a wide range of market-leading products you need look no further. We take this opportunity to provide you with a picture of our capabilities, and look forward to working with you.
A steady programme of investment has resulted in Dragon’s Garden becoming one of the most flexible and capable fruit and vegetable processors in China.
Organic Farming
This was the first activity of Dragon’s Garden. From a small start (a 9 acre farm) our organic farming operations now cover approximately 100 acres.
The main crops on our organic farms are strawberries and vegetables. As we grow our own raw materials as well as processing and packing we have excellent traceability for our organic items. We are certified by Ecocert.
Fresh Pack
Dragon’s Garden farms 19 large traditional Chinese polytunnels. With these structures it is possible to ripen strawberries in mid-winter and supply fresh-pack strawberries for the Chinese market, for example for international hotels in Qingdao.
Quality packs for manufacturing industry
We are very proud of the dedicated team of workers in our chilled packing room that have helped us win consistent and growing business in packing frozen berries and other fruit for retail and food service. Achieving excellent quality requires a dedicated mindset from all staff involved, allied with the appropriate quality systems.
Individually Quick Frozen fruit
This is a core business for us. We pack a wide range of IQF fruits, as 10 kg bulk packs or as retails bags of individual fruits or mixes.
Straight-pack IQF fruit may not always be the best raw material for the job, so we also offer dicing, slicing and sugar-addition, which can maximise important characteristics such as firmness and fruit integrity.
Frozen fruit purees
Our factory produces seed-in and seed-out purees of berries and other fruit and vegetables. Generally we do not heat treat our purees and we ship them frozen in a variety of packaging options such as cartons, pails or drums. In this way the full flavour, nutrient value and colour of the original fruit is retained.
We have blending capabilities at our factory and can deliver quite complex blended puree recipes.
Freeze-dried fruits
Shandong Province is home to some of the most advanced freeze drying factories in the world. Whilst we do not own a freeze drying facility ourselves, we have many years of experience in supplying fruit to such factories on a toll charge basis and marketing the freeze dried products. We promote transparency and all facilities used in the process may be audited by our customers. Dragon’s Garden fruits are available as freeze dried whole fruit, slices or powders.
Development and bespoke projects
We are always willing to undertake product development with customers, and are in a unique position to be able to do so with our highly flexible packing and processing facilities.
Infused, dried fruit
For many years now the message from consumers has been a reluctance to choose dried fruit that has been sulphured and/or artificially coloured. Our response has been to build a new factory to produce juice-infused dried fruit, without sulphur and added colours. Our products have a prominent position in the UK and Australasian markets and our portfolio includes strawberries, blackcurrants, raspberries, blueberries and others.
Development and bespoke projects
We are always willing to undertake product development with customers, and are in a unique position to be able to do so with our highly flexible packing and processing facilities.
Jams and fruit preparations
Our latest investment is the installation of cooking kettles for the production of fruit preparations for the bakery and dairy industries, as well as traditional jams. Our standard pack is a 10kg heat sealed bag-in-box. We can produce to customer recipes at high quality and competitive cost, and of course maintain recipe protection for our customers.
Puree cubes
We have blending capabilities at our factory and can deliver quite complex blended puree recipes. Cubes are available as 5g, 20g or 30g. These puree cubes are attractive, enable easy portion control and are easy to handle. They are a very flexible product with varied uses.
Development and bespoke projects
We are always willing to undertake product development with customers, and are in a unique position to be able to do so with our highly flexible packing and processing facilities.
Ethical and Social Responsibility
We take our ethical and social responsibility very seriously and do our best to be good corporate citizens. In addition to our organic stewardship of our land, we have installed a waste water treatment system that allows all our waste water from washing and processing to be returned to nearby farms as completely clean irrigation water. We have a tank in our final outlet stocked with fish as evidence of this purity. We observe the employment laws of China and our staff are our greatest asset. We are members of SEDEX.