Following our communications about the recent Koffmann’s price increases, here is another potato crop update. This should offer further explanation of the issues currently effecting potato stocks.
One of the things we do differently to other wholesalers is we keep our customers updated as much as possible.
Knowledge is key, so we want to be proactive and give you as much information as possible so that we can work together through the remainder of the season.
As highlighted earlier this year, we have experienced storage issues never seen before. This is a direct result of the dry conditions at harvest followed by high temperatures for the early part of the storage period in November.
As a result., we are seeing small areas of rot on some of the tubers.
In a normal season, the damaged area calcifies, and the damage is visible as a skin defect only. Normally surface deep, and disappears during any peeling process.
However, this season we are seeing exactly the opposite where the minor damaged area has turned into a dry rot.
This can be seen as a small crater-like indentation on the skin which penetrates a few millimetres into the flesh of the potato. That said, this normally only equates to less than 1% of the total weight of the potato.
Whilst every endeavour is made to remove all of the defective potatoes at packing, it is inevitable that the odd tuber will slip through. Every tonne of potatoes sold entails 5,500 tubers being inspected!
Our advice is to work through this problem by trimming the defected area from the potato and the remainder will perform as normal.
As we commented previously, we appreciate your understanding and support on these issues that are being faced industry-wide. We’ll provide another potato crop update as and when we receive any information.
