Potato market chronicle March 2017

While spring heralds the first arrivals of early potatoes from Egypt and Israel, it’s clear that all operators are still working hard to market their stocks in the fridge, the essential complexity being to maintain continuity of quality and delivery with their customers. While beautiful washable batches with no major defects should still be valued until the end of May, we are still seeing a certain inertia and lack of dynamism, an annual sign of the difficulty of finding the right quality-price ratio in a context of high prices.
A drop in potato consumption in Europe?

The end of the campaign should bring us a few more uncertainties, but I keep in mind that a market is always more difficult to understand when prices are high. Can you give us an initial assessment of the campaign? The Eastern European countries, Germany and Italy, were only marginally present at the buying stage. Germany and Poland were even our competitors for Italy, offering lower quality but much more attractive prices. While consumption of fresh potatoes in Europe has fallen, French packers have mainly been working on promotional tenders, without much fanfare.

Europe, potatoes and consumption

France remains Spain and Portugal’s main trading partner, despite competition from the Netherlands, which offers cheaper potatoes and tight logistics. As far as the planting season is concerned, few varieties are available for consumption, and none for processing. Deliveries are in progress.