Preston company signs deal with Ukrainian apple grower to import fruit from the war-torn country

By Hannah Bridgeman
Published 4th Jan 2023, 15:45 BST
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T Dobson’s and Sons which is based in Fulwood and their collaborator Fresh4U, worked for six months to secure the partnership with their Ukrainian business partners.

The leading fruit importer and wholesaler has now begun importing produce from Farm Gadz, which is located in the Ternopil region of Ukraine, to distribute their apples across the country. Distribution will take place to all parts of the UK and the apples are transported by road on a journey that takes eight days covering a distance of 1500 miles through five countries in specialist containers.

Stephen Stein from Fresh4U, a company that has helped facilitate the trade deal, spoke of the difficulties the six-month planning process entailed to get the apples from Ukraine to Preston. Stephen said: “When you’ve seen on the news where there’s infrastructure that has been bombed and power stations have been shot down, that’s the difficulties we have had. We could be packing apples and suddenly the station gets attacked by a Russian bomb or drone and the power station is closed down and everything goes into darkness. So firstly the job of packing the apples to begin with is really tricky.

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"The second thing is transport by road from Ukraine to the United Kingdom. It’s taking about eight days to drive from Ukraine across to Preston due to the priority given to other imports at the borders. It’s a difficult situation to pack the apples, get them distributed across the UK in time for the apples to still be in good eating order.”

Yurri Filinok from Ukraine drove his truck on Christmas day to ensure Lancashire consumers got their apples.Yurri Filinok from Ukraine drove his truck on Christmas day to ensure Lancashire consumers got their apples.
Yurri Filinok from Ukraine drove his truck on Christmas day to ensure Lancashire consumers got their apples.

The deal started last week with the first arrival of apples on December 28.

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Stephen said: “The biggest cost we had was the truck, it was really expensive to get the truck across. The Ukrainians really do appreciate this so much. The driver left before Christmas and spent Christmas Day in his truck. They are just so dedicated to making this happen, it’s so important to them.

“They’ve been under so much pressure because of the war, just to even survive, especially in the winter months. This trade shows that the people of Preston care about them. It’s taken me six to eight months to make this happen, it's been back and forth, but we’ve got there in the end.”