Family Business

Family Farms

Hartley’s was started by entrepreneurial farmer Jack Hartley, who started his working life as an arable farmer in the 1950’s. With the rise in popularity of prepared and branded foods in the 1960’s land was purchased to grow fresh produce such as peas, carrots and potatoes for the emerging brands of Heinz and Batchelor’s. Today the farming enterprise is concentrated around approximately 3000 acres around Knottingley and Tadcaster, West Yorkshire dedicated to peas and potatoes. The business is now being managed by it's third generation of Hartleys with a fourth crop of youngsters well underway.

Processing Ingredients

The factory was built by Sir Thomas Eastwood in 1975, to freeze produce grown on his 4,000 acre estate. Hartley’s continues to innovate in the spirit of Jack Hartley, we invested over £5 million in the latest equipment and systems for our freezing plant in the Yorkshire countryside. Located close to our own pea fields this 11 acre site includes a plant with a production capacity of 15000 tonnes of high quality IQF vegetables per year. This is supported by our on-site cold storage facility which can hold up to 13,000 pallets of produce.

Great Products

Hartleys have entered the twenty first century with a clear vision: We aim to offer a wider range of vegetable and fruit ingredients to further manufacturers in the UK and Europe from the most reliable sources including our own facility in Yorkshire.

We aim to source as much produce as we can from local fields but this also means sourcing from other countries with different growing conditions. We know our customers want to have as much faith in the product that we provide from Turkey or Belgium as from our own farms near Selby and we spend a lot of time ensuring that our supply partners abroad share Hartleys focus on quality by walking their fields and auditing their factories.

The Environment

In the past few years we have taken a proactive approach to enhancing our natural assets. We have planted several thousand native trees and reclaimed some ancient English woodland. We want to encourage as much wildlife on our farms as possible because farmed crops are still part of an eco system. So we plant several acres of wild flower mixes and leave patches of our fields free from crops to encourage insect and bird life such as sky larks and grey partridges. We have also just gained the support of 'Natural England' to flood a natural wetland for wading birds.

Our History

1954
Jack Hartley a butchers son from Knottingley started J E Hartley ltd.

1950s/60s
land was purchased around the area to grow peas, carrots and potatoes for Heinz and Bathelors.

1975
The factory at Thorganby was built to process vegetables grown on his 4000 acre estate.

1983
The factory was bought by 'Hartley's to freeze the peas being grown for Heinz and Batchelors

1985
New 4 tonne per hour freezer tunnel and multi head check weigher installed.

1993
£2.5m investment to create an extra 3000 pallets of cold storage and a new repack department.

1996
Automated vegetable mixing line added.

2000
New 6000 pallet automated coldstore added.

2001
Packing department automated.

2002
Additional Heinen freezer added to increase pea processing capacity to 10t per hour.

2003
Argus laser sorter added to establish cleanest line in the country.

2005
New form fill seal machine added to process line to enable packing of 10/15/20kg sacks.

2006-10
Year on year growth of 10% into manufacturing market with improved profitability.

2010
Recommisioned number 2 coldstore to add a further 2000 pallet spaces storage. Full office refurbishment.