HANDE L EN AFZ E T Snowvalley is the first company in China that has invested in a complete cleaning and packaging line. ‘Because small packaging is entirely new in China, we started from scratch’, explains Johan Kikstra, the China director of the APH group. Beside a Bijlsma Hercules receiving hopper, the potatoes are cleaned by a Tummers washer and finally packaged by a Manter weigher and packaging machine. The potatoes are either packaged in 25 kg mesh bags or – with the clipper machine – in small 1 to 5 kg bags. supplies the G2 generation as user seed. The company sells 20,000 tons of seed annually, says salesman LiuXiaoce. In addition, the company grows 700 hectares of consumption potatoes, which it sells on the market for 11 eurocents. The company sells the major part of its yields to the McCain factory in the Northern Chinese town of Harbin, which is over 1,000 kilometres from its main place of business. Moreover, a great many of its fresh potatoes are transported to the Shanghai region. Potato prices are much higher there than in the Beijing region, which is closer. 1,200 hec tares of l i f t ing by hand Snowvalley is still lifting 1,200 hectares of potatoes by hand, which involves no fewer than 2,000 people! It is hard work, because the potatoes must be off the land before the early frosts. A big advantage of growing potatoes here is that the fields are high up, 1500 metres above sea level. Moreover, the air is very clean and there are virtually no problems with aphids or Phytophthora. However, to be on the safe side, a 7 to 10 day spraying schedule is employed to prevent the disease. Snowvalley also has plans to build its own chips factory in the future. In order to do this, the company is investing enormously in its storage capacity. In addition to the already existing 20,000 tons of storage space, Snowvalley is now building yet another a store with a capacity of 20,000 tons. According to schedule, the store should be operational after the next harvest year. Manager Liu Xiaoce of Snowvalley tells us that, for the introduction of varieties, they cooperate with the Dutch seed potato merchant HZPC in the Dutch village of Joure. For two years, Snowvalley has been propagating with a variety named C3. Liu says that they are only allowed to market this table potato variety as a consumption potato, to prevent the variety being grown throughout the country, as has happened with Favorita. Thanks to these agreements, Liu believes that HZPC has now become a well-known partner in China. Many proces sor s ac t i ve in the market At this moment, the processing companies McCain, Simplot and the local processor Xumei are currently active in the Chinese market. Simplot is in Beijing, McCain in Harbin and Xumei in Lanzhou. The market price for chip potatoes here is approximately 11 eurocents per kilogram. Frito Lay is in Beijing and in Shanghai. All these manufacturers are looking for partners such as Xisen and Snowvalley to achieve a constant quality of potatoes all year round. About 80 percent of the potatoes from big companies such as Xisen and Snowvalley already go immediately to the supermarkets in China. A brief visit to a French Carrefour branch in Beijing showed that they have a wide range of potatoes on the shelves. In addition to unpackaged potatoes, with very deep eyes, you also see beautiful, European-style table potatoes that are neatly packaged in mesh bags. The luxury potatoes with more expensive packaging can also be found on the shelves; three potatoes in a dish covered by thin, cheap foil that easily tears. The price: 70 eurocents a kilogram, which is quite a bit higher than the unpackaged potatoes that only cost 18 eurocents a kilogram. The harvest of the mini tubers is studied in detail, both by the Chinese and the visitors from the APH Group. Jaap Delleman Potato World 2009 • number 3 23 Pagina 22
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