News on The Potato Supply Chain from United Kingdom

A buoyant and buzzing potato industry has gathered in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, for British Potato 2007 (BP2007), the key UK industry event of the year. Attendance over the two days (November 28 and 29) was up, according to event organisers the Briti...

The British Potato Industry Award Panel is pleased to confirm David Walker, founding chirman of the British Potato Council,  as this year's winner. Presenting the award at the British Potato Council's premier event, BP2007, in Harrogate, Janet Godfrey ...

Seabrook Crisps is sourcing local potatoes for its range of crisps. The Bradford-based company has asked the EFFP (English Farmers and Foods Partnerships) for assistance in setting up a supply chain with local producers. The EFFP has identified Wold...

Growers could cut, on average, potato store energy bills by maybe £1000-2000 a year, according to Andrew Kneeshaw of energy consultants, FEC Services. Energy use didn’t have to be inevitable, he told growers at a British Potato 2007 seminar, and there ...

McCain Foods' first viral ad has been viewed by more than 100,000 people in 124 countries in its first week.The viral, created by glue London and Aardman animations of Wallace &Gromit fame, invites users to create a personalised message. The viral ...

RJ Herbert Engineering launches an affordable optical potato sorter, the DDS 1300 ML Autosort. This market entry model optical sorter gives lower cost entry whilst maintaning high quality electronic grading of your potatoes.   The sorter is a vision ...

A Herefordshire potato grower who lost nearly £500,000 of crop in this summer's floods has vowed never to grow potatoes again for one the country's biggest processors after it refused to make allowances for the damage inflicted to his crop. Peter Vaugh...

The British Potato Council’s provisional estimate of Total Potato Production in Great Britain for the 2007 crop year is 5.446 million tons, down 1% from 2006. The current crop has a planted area that is 3% higher than last year, but average yields per ...

New varieties of potatoes bred at SCRI, including Mayan Gold and Inca Sun, have better flavour than their more common relatives, thanks to their umami. Although perhaps not widely known, umami, from the Japanese word for delicious, is one of the five...

At the last British Potato event in 2005, you probably did not give climate change a second thought. Since then your crop has borne floods, heavy rain events and temperature extremes rarely experienced in the UK. Climate change has now climbed to the ...

The amount of wastage in potato crops being lifted this autumn is above last year, according to the British Potato Council. Most crops lifted so far had around 15-20% wastage, although up to 50% was reported in bad situations. Complete crop loss was s...

Ulster potato processors and packers must be wary when buying potatoes, following confirmation of a brown rot outbreak in the Republic. That was the message from the Ulster Farmers Union, which warned that if infected potatoes find their way into lo...

Rural land prices gained further momentum during H1 2007, with prices increasing by 22.6% on a year earlier, compared to 18.1% in H2 2006. Demand continues to boom in both the agricultural and non-agricultural sector.Commercial farmers were still very...

This season’s combined Fight Against Blight (FAB) and Blightwatch service has revealed unprecedented disease levels, says to the British Potato Council (BPC). There have been 301 outbreaks reported and confirmed as positive – more than twice the se...

Walkers Crisps is the first firm to put carbon footprint figures on its products, with nine more companies set to follow. How are these figures calculated?

THE extent of losses to the 2007 potato crop from flood, waterlogging and blight is provisionally estimated at 3,300 hectares (2.6 per cent of total plantings). Hardest hit areas are from Herefordshire and Shropshire, across to Nottinghamshire and N...

Tight blight management will be crucial if this year's crop is to survive in store, warned specialists who joined a record 500-plus visitors to the BPC-sponsored event hosted by SCRI,SAC and CSC PotatoCare. Tuber blight was the biggest immediate issue...

One of UK's favourite crisp makers, Tyrrells Potato Chips, could not escape damage. Its potato crops, grown near Leominster, were under inches of water as torrential rain swept across the region. The company, which provides products to more than 4,000 ...