Our History

Since 1975, Ridley Bell and his family have been fans of the berry. Since the initial success at Footscray Market Melbourne, Ridley saw the future of berries in Australia. He moved to Northern New South Wales and formed Mountain Blue, and today it’s one of the leading genetics, nursery and blueberry farms globally.

 Over the years, Mountain Blue has steadily expanded, with over 200 hectares of commercial blueberry plantings spread across farms in New South Wales & Queensland, as well as Australia’s largest commercial nursery and berry breeding programs that span across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania intending to provide premium berries 12 months of the year.

Underpinning everything that Mountain Blue has achieved is Ridley’s continuous aim for improvement. Be it the berry flavour, texture, timing, or size of berries – his focus has to lead to an internationally recognised Blueberry breeding program for Low Chill and High Chill varieties.

The Bell Family is laced within the business, with Ridley’s son Andrew now overseeing the company and Ridley leading the team through research and development. A key milestone of this research has been the development of the ‘Eureka’ variety in 2008. Eureka was developed by the crossing of two blueberry varieties that resulted in bigger, crunchier, sweeter fruit – premium in every sense of the word. Since this breakthrough, Mountain Blue has continued to improve on Eureka and is now producing bigger and better-tasting varieties faster.

These days, Mountain Blue continues its focus on unrelenting improvement through innovation and development and partnerships globally. They have also commenced a breeding program for Blackberries and Raspberries which will apply the same taste, grower and consumer-led philosophy, and in the near future, we will see these new varieties on supermarket shelves.