Case Study: Berry Gardens cuts meeting time and admin costs with Diligent Boards

Berry Gardens nourished by Diligent Boards

Berry Gardens, the UK’s leading berry and stone-fruit co-operative (selling over £240m in 2014 and holding more than 30% market share), runs a 16-person main board and a 10-person sub-board. Compiling and couriering monthly 200‑page board packs for ~18 people consumed two days of administrator time and half a day of the finance director’s time, incurred significant printing and postage costs, and created growing physical-archive storage issues — making timely, secure distribution a major challenge.

After trialing PDFs, Berry Gardens adopted the Diligent Boards portal. The solution gave directors better lead time to pre-read materials, shortened meetings by about two hours, removed the need for paper archives and courier costs, and improved overall organization; the company is now exploring broader use of the platform, with the on-screen resources section singled out as especially valuable.

Berry Gardens

Nick Allen

Finance Director