Heero Gramsma, the Director of Nedato, says the potato market will develop slowly as we head towards Christmas, "There is some supply of the smaller potatoes, but these are not suitable for packaging. That makes everything quite calm, and because of this the prices are falling. The difference in price between the worst and best potatoes is huge. But we do know that we don't have an abundance of potatoes. There is enough potential in the market, even though it may not appear so right now. In the long term I am completely confident."
"Domestic sales have done well this season and we are very pleased about that. In the retail sector everything is being done to boost potato sales, and this will continue as we near Christmas. This is obviously very good and it is also in line with the successful promotional campaign 'Power to the Pieper', which draws attention to the healthy and varied choices that potatoes offer. In that respect, good progress has been made in recent years," says Heero.
Electronic potato
Last year Nedato created a long-term plan with the goal of continuously improving the quality of the products they deliver. This extra focus on quality has already proven successful for Nedato, "This season we started with reasonably good quality, which means there is enough good quality potatoes available. The foundation of our quality plan is: the right varieties and professional potato growers. We also have an electronic potato that performs many tests in order to find any ways that damage could be caused," says the director.
The improvements in our sorting and packaging company this past summer, combined with our quality plan, has lead to visibly better quality potatoes in our packaging. This in turn leads to higher turnover in our export markets. So far we have seen demand for import coming from Southern Europe, Portugal and the Balkans. In addition, there are good opportunities again in the Middle East and Iraq. All these markets demand high quality potatoes, and nowadays the only way to export more volumes of potatoes to these countries is by providing high quality goods," says Heero.