South Lincolnshire peas, along with other fruit and vegetables grown locally, will continue to fill cans of Princes’ products.
The food and drink business, which employs 1,073 people across its Long Sutton and Wisbech production sites, has reconfirmed its support for UK farmers by committing to buy more than 40,000 tonnes of British-grown fruit and vegetables during the coming year.
That includes a few thousand tonnes of peas supplied by Fen Peas, the largest supplier of green peas to Princes.
Fen Peas managing director Stephen Francis, who finished the local pea campaign a couple of weeks ago, met Princes agronomist Keith Costello to look at the pea crop.
Stephen said: “It wasn’t a bad harvest, but with the heat they matured too rapidly and we couldn’t get them all green. We are now combining what we left behind and we’ll sell them for animal feed.”
Princes has signed new deals with growers of potatoes, peas, carrots, rhubarb and beetroot.