Keelings
Irish produce-grower and distributor
Keelings is a major produce grower and distributor operating at St. Margaret's, County Dublin, Ireland.
The Keeling family began growing fruit in 1926 and the business continues to be operated by the Keeling family.
The brand specialises in strawberries, blueberries and blackberries, with growing capacity for 100 million strawberries annually.
History
Keelings is Ireland's largest fruit and vegetable distributor. Keelings is a 100% family-owned business and has been producing fruit and salads on its farms in North Dublin since the 1930s. Caroline Keeling is the CEO, a part of the 3rd generation of Keelings to run the family business, having taken over from her father in 2006 as CEO after working her way up the ranks from when she first joined the business in 1994 as technical manager. Since 2006, the company has expanded to include 5 divisions (Keelings Retail, Keelings Farm Fresh, Keelings Market, Keelings International and Keelings Solutions) with operations in the UK, Europe and Asia.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in the Republic of Ireland the company gained widespread controversy over its decision to hire seasonal workers from Bulgaria and elsewhere in Eastern Europe during the government-mandated lockdown. The company indicated that it had problems recruiting sufficient pickers locally, and that the skilled workers flown in would start work only after the required self-isolation period was completed.
The public source identifies “Keelings” as irish produce-grower and distributor. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Keelings, Irish and produce-grower.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q96385562. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1926, 2006 and 1994.
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This entry incorporates text from “Keelings” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.