How do we lose 9,000 Tonnes of British Strawberries every year?

At a Glance

The UK loses around 9,000 tonnes of strawberries a year before they reach a shelf, enough to supply Wimbledon 230 times over, and most of it is lost to problems that take hold before anyone can see them. Spotting stress days earlier with Fotenix reduces downgrades and improves yield forecast accuracy, helping producers grow more with less. 

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Wimbledon is once again upon us, and the Championships are preparing to serve up another summer of British-grown strawberries. Visitors to the All England Club will consume an estimated 38.4 tonnes, but our analysis points to an uncomfortable truth behind the punnet. Every year, the UK loses around 9,000 tonnes of strawberries before they reach our shelves, mainly due to pests, diseases, and quality downgrades. That’s enough to supply Wimbledon 230 times over.

1 in 10 hectares lost

At current farm-gate prices, it is also around £37 million of British strawberries lost before sale every year – the equivalent of roughly 400 hectares of fruit. That means that around one in ten of every hectare in the UK dedicated to strawberry-growing is going to waste. The problem extends well beyond a single crop; Cranfield University estimates that 37% of all UK fruit and vegetables, around 2.4 million tonnes, are lost between farm and shelf.

"It's a striking amount of fruit to lose, and most of it is preventable," says Charles Veys, founder and CEO of Fotenix. "Strawberries are grown with real skill and investment, and much of the loss happens before anyone can see there's a problem. Catching issues earlier is one of the most immediate ways to keep more of the British crop on British shelves."

Strawberries are highly susceptible to pests and disease, and problems often take hold before they are visible to the human eye. By the time symptoms are visible, fruit has already been damaged or downgraded, and yield has deviated from the forecast.

Six-figure savings

Fotenix can help to put a stop to that. Our automated crop scout scans your glasshouse daily, recording more than 250 plant-health measurements on every pass and reading the crop across wavelengths the eye can't see. Problems show up days before they become visible, cutting time to detection by up to 80% compared with manual scouting.

For a typical 10-hectare strawberry site, that earlier detection is worth more than £118,000 a year. It comes from protected yield, skilled staff focused on intervention rather than observation, and problems that are isolated to one tray rather than treated once they’ve spread to a whole compartment. 

Image source: An indicative annual saving for a strawberry grower with 10ha, spending £60k on labour, with a yield loss of 5-15% per cycle, with 1 ha affected before most interventions. Calculated with our early detection calculator. 

If every grower in the country had a means to detect early signs of stress, pests, or disease, that would put a serious dent in those 9,000 lost tonnes. Earlier detection won't save every strawberry, but it significantly reduces losses and ultimately helps growers to put more fruit on the shelves. 

A note on our calculations: 

• Fotenix analysis applies WRAP's strawberry loss rate of around 9% to DEFRA's 2024 UK strawberry production of 99,000 tonnes, giving approximately 8,900 tonnes lost a year:

  • At DEFRA's 2024 average price of £4.16/kg, about £37 million, and at the average yield of 21.8 tonnes per hectare, that equates to roughly 400 hectares of production.

  • UK strawberry production was grown across 4,527 hectares (DEFRA Horticulture Statistics 2024). 

  • Wimbledon consumes 38.4 tonnes of strawberries during the Championships each year (All England Lawn Tennis Club), so around 8,900 tonnes is roughly 230 times its annual consumption.

• A 2024 Cranfield University study estimated 37% of UK fruit and vegetables, around 2.4 million tonnes, is lost between production and sale.