EXTRACT 1 Demand and supply – UK Potato Market in 2014

source: courier.co.uk January 31st 2014

ONE OF the leading potato packers in the country has this week expressed concern over the latest industry statistics showing an 8% drop in consumptionsaying that it would inevitably lead to downward price pressure for growers.

Duncan Worth, whose family own the QV Food business, was speaking in Perth when he highlighted the massive drop in demand for potatoes.

Part of the problem, he said, lay in the big hike in prices when the 2012 GB crop yield collapsed.

A few growers had made a lot of money from that year when the GB total tonnage had fallen to 4.5 million tonnes from six million tonnes. Prices to consumers in 2012 had more than doubled.

Mr Worth’s business had to buy in French potatoes to meet their customers’ demands.

Consumers changed their buying habits, often buying smaller packs of potatoes as they tried to make their spending cash go further. In 2013 the crop has recovered to 5.5m tonnes but, as Mr Worth pointed out, consumption has not risen back to previous levels.

Major retailers had held on to the higher prices they had been getting in 2012 and were therefore making more money out of the smaller throughput.

The other effect of the reduced consumption of potatoes was that there would continue to be more produced than was needed.

The Daily Mail reveals that sales of fresh potatoes have slumped by 8% in 2014, with rice now making up the starch content for an increasing number of UK meals.