TRADE AND MARKETING Potato sector keenly anticipates growth of Polish supermarkets Consistency in shape, size and quality is necessary to meet the growth in the supermarkets’, Herman Verveld (l) explains to Engel Louwes and Jerzy Wróbel. example, is the exclusive offer of varieties’, Verveld adds. ‘We’re currently having good results with the Colomba, for example. If you were able to offer a variety like that to a supermarket like Biedronka, you could immediately start adapting the entire preliminary line. We’d be able to plan the seed potato acreage more accurately and, subsequently, meet the desired consistency and continuity. Supermarkets also like to add a personal element to their products, and that’s no different in Poland. In this way, they’re able to have the same product on the shelf all year round, and it’s easier and cheaper to set up promotion campaigns for these products. Flexible, quick, and reliable are the three conditions needed to be successful as a potato small-packaging business in Poland. Competition among themselves is not necessary and is also not an issue. ‘The market for potatoes is growing fast enough here’, is the argument. It’s important to make proper arrangements with buyers and suppliers and to stand out in both product and quality, that’s what a visit to two important players, Agrosad and AWEX, shows us. A third important player is Onix, but the managing director was abroad during our visit. Agrosad responds to the demand of the supermarkets for variation and quality Jerzy Wróbel is the owner of Agrosad. His business is situated in Blaszki. Wróbel not only packages potatoes, he also grows them. What he needs over and above his own harvest, he buys elsewhere. If he needs early potatoes from July to August, he does business with 120 fellowgrowers in the region. For storage potatoes from the main harvest, he works with 25 permanent growers of consumption potatoes. In mid August, the time we visited his packaging company, Wróbel harvests his first potatoes. It’s dry as dust then. We see a reasonably-new Grimme harvester, surrounded by clouds of dust, lifting potatoes of the Carrera variety from the fertile Polish soil. Wróbel watches the scene from a distance with us and meanwhile tells us about the situation on the Polish potato market. He calls himself a true potato specialist who is not afraid of making investments. Not too madly, step by step. By following this strategy, his company has expanded over twenty years into a packaging company that can deliver 400 tons of potatoes a day. Depending on market demand, he has a range of different packaging to choose from. This year, he’s delivering a considerable quantity of unwashed potatoes in 15 kilogram bags. Consumers are buying these potatoes unpacked in the supermarket. Because of the current, high potato prices, many consumers go for these cheaper potatoes instead of the small-packaged variant. Eighty percent of his turnover comes from potatoes, the remainder comes from packaging onions, vegetables and cabbages. Active for 20 years Wróbel had already started with the cultivation and marketing of potatoes twenty years ago. ‘My first introduction to the potato crop was in Holland during a study trip. I was introduced to a range of breeding companies in the first week of November. I saw how new varieties were being developed. What struck me was the close collaboration between trading companies and growers on the one hand and the market on the other. I visited a large packaging station in those days. They were packaging potatoes in 2.5 kilogram bags. I knew then straightaway that we would go into that same direction in Poland. All the potatoes were still packaged in 25 kilogram bags in those days. When I got back to Poland, I first bought second-hand packaging machines to start packaging myself in 2.5 kilogram bags. We sold these to the bazaar in Wroclaw straightaway. We gave our address details and that was an immediate hit. The arrival of the mobile phone helped me enormously later on. I learned that I had to take especiallygood care to ensure a continuous flow of a good quality of the best varieties.’ Ten years ago, Wróbel started packaging in his own business. He only started growing his own crop in 2010. ‘One important reason for me was that you always have potatoes when you need them.’ He’s now growing 200 hectares of potatoes. His storehouse is next to the shed in which he operates his packaging line. Part of the stored potatoes he keeps for periods with severe frost or an extra demand such as around Christmas. Potato World 2014 • number 2 31 Pagina 36

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