Renowned apple grower and businesswoman Devora Peake has died after a long illness.

Mrs Peake, who was almost 84, is best-known for starting Copella Fruit Juices at Hill Farm, Boxford, with her second husband Bill.

The multi-million pound business has produced one of the leading brands of fruit juices, produced using organic farming methods.

The business has grown to 900 acres of orchard and arable land, and includes Stoke-by-Nayland Golf Club, and Plantsman Ardleigh Storage Limited, a fruit packing and storage company.

In 1989 she sold the company to the Taunton Cider Company. Two years later Copella was bought back by the company and it was sold to Tropicana UK at the end of 1997.

Mrs Peake was awarded an MBE in 1996. The daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants, she was born in Tel Aviv in 1915.

Mrs Peake married Bernard Loshak and they settled at 120-acre fruit farm Hill Farm in Boxford in 1938.

She married her second husband just after the Second World War, and together they developed the business, until his death in 1979. The business is now run by her eldest daughter Susanna Rendall.

She leaves five children, 12 grandchildren and a newly-born great-grand-daughter.

The funeral will be held on April 6 at St Mary's Church, Stoke-by-Nayland.

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