One of England's largest pome fruit growers is looking to follow in the path of other producers around the world and expand its business to overseas markets.

AC Goatham & Son, which owns 17 farms and 20 partner orchards across 3,775 acres in the southeastern county of Kent, grows nearly one in four apples sold in the U.K.

A recent £10 million investment in new cold storage and packing facility doubled the company's capacity - a necessary move given the one million additional new trees to be planted by 2020.

To see a photo gallery from the farm, click here.

Even with the extra volumes set to be produced by the industry in the coming years, domestic production in the U.K. is not expected to catch up with demand for a long time, but AC Goatham & Son is now hoping to find alternative markets for its fruit.

At present U.K. apple exports are almost nonexistent, according to commercial director Carol Ford, but now the company is getting ready to enter the global stage.

"We're thinking about the fact that the market’s increasing and that presents an opportunity of what you can do in terms of supplying elsewhere," she said.

"So we just got thinking if New Zealand, for example, which is a good producer of apples and pears, exports 60% of their crop, that’s really food for thought.

"We grow in county Kent, with a fantastic quality of fresh produce and more production coming, so why would you not want to share that with other markets?"

Currently AC Goatham & Son is carrying out research with the help of a program by government organization UK Trade and Investment, exploring the potential that lies overseas.

"This program helps you to understand exporting and how to go about it," Ford said.

As part of the program the representative has recently been to Milan to see first-hand the Italian apple export industry, and also took a trip to Asia Fruit Logistica in Hong Kong.

"Our competition isn’t the farm down the road - our competition are farmers are farmers in Europe and the rest of the world," she said.

"When you go to Hong Kong and you see the Dutch are there, the Germans are there, the French are there, you think 'well they obviously see something going on here'."

Ford said she was hoping 'Britishness' could prove popular in emerging markets with new and aspiring middle classes, and that global consumer trends toward food safety could play in the U.K.'s favor.

"These markets understand that these quality standards we have out of the U.K. are very high. The BRC [British Retail Consortium] Global Standards came out of supplying supermarkets here in the U.K," she said.

"Food security is important, people want a secure, safe and sustainable supply."

AC Goatham & Son is yet to decide which specific markets to target in the future and who will be its global partners that it supplies directly, but the company is confident this could be the first step in a potentially vibrant future exporting overseas.

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