Cranberry farmers in central Newfoundland are expecting a great harvest this year.

Ottawa and the province helped set up 10 farms when the paper mill in Grand Falls-Windsor closed in 2009.

Lloyd Warford is co-ordinating the cranberry project.

He says only some of the farms are ready to produce fruit, but their first crop is exceptional because of the good weather this summer.

"We'll have somewhere in the vicinity of 30, 000 pounds of berries, and the berries are 90 per cent ripe or better," said Warford. "They're a decent size and it's very encouraging."

He said by 2015, farms in the area will be producing almost 1.5 million kilograms of berries a year.

He added that most of the berries are sent to Europe, but he'd like to see them in local markets as well.