12/04/12

Hops supplier focusing on production in Kent

by Chris Price

A supplier of hops to the global brewing industry is closing one of its sites to concentrate on production in Kent.

Botanix will cease operations at its plant in Worcester to focus on work at its Paddock Wood head office, creating six new jobs.

The 21 employees at the closing Eardiston site in Tenbury Wells are able to apply for the new Kent positions at the privately-owned company.

The company's chief executive John Moss said: "Due to the extremely difficult situation in the hop market, the management of Botanix has decided, with regret, to cease all operations on the Eardiston site during 2012.

"Via a carefully managed program during 2012 we will re-centre all our operations here in Paddock Wood."

Botanix Ltd is a subsidary of J Barth and Sohn of Nuremberg, Germany. It specialises in the supply of hops, hops products and refined hop extracts to the global brewing industry.

Botanix's head office on Hop Pocket Lane in Paddock Wood is set in the heart of Kent's hop growing country.

The first hop garden in England was set up near Canterbury in 1520 and by 1655 a third of the UK hop crop was produced in Kent.

At the peak of the county's hop growing era in the mid-19th century, more than 80,000 people arrived each summer to pick hops.

By 1878, 77,000 acres of land in Kent were used to grow the crop.

From 1908 foreign hops began being imported, causing trouble for Kentish growers.