TRADE AND MARKETING China wants to secure its food supply with potatoes NAFTC SUPPORTS BUSINESSES IN CHINA The NAFTC foundation was established at the end of 2008 to support Dutch technology companies from the agro & food sector in developing and continuing their businesses in the distant growth markets. NAFTC China, the Netherlands Agro, Food & Technology Center, was established in Beijing in 2009. The idea is that, by working together and by promoting the Dutch approach per production chain, the participating companies have a strong promotion pitch in rapidly-growing, major markets. In this way, the often escalating and enormous demand can be satisfied. The China Office has had its focus on the potato sector right from the start. ‘The Netherlands has a strong potato sector, with expert agencies at semi-government level and strong players for each link in the production and processing chains. With that, the Netherlands has a unique variation of high-quality supplies, with which a wide-ranging and complete package of products, knowledge and services can be provided,which will quickly match the current demand in China. We like to play a motivating and coordinating role as businesses or government authorities don’t often get a chance to do this, but the need is there’, Oscar Salet of NAFTC China explains. Performance and result driven Salet observes that the new generation of farm businesses and government bodies in China are to an increasing degree performance and result driven. ‘Time and again, we need to show the added value and payback periods of our products, because the costs for European equipment are high by Chinese standards. But there is the realisation that with the use of proper equipment, farmer training, development of cropping methods and quality varieties, and an interaction between local and foreign partners, the desired progress can be achieved. We’ll see many initiatives in the coming years to raise the potato sector to a higher level. Varieties, mechanisation, scale enlargement, federation development, post-harvest handling and storage, processing and product development of new potato-based food concepts will follow each other in rapid succession for attention and investments. Foreign businesses that want to be successful in China will need to gear specifically to the local needs in the various regions of China to offer localised solutions and products that will really help the potato sector in China’, Salet explains. with a Chinese partner. ‘China mainly focuses on high-quality fast-food, but there’s also a steady growth in casual dining’, Zelhorst points out. ‘In order to be able to serve this market, we must secure our raw materials supply. Thanks to close collaboration with local partners, we can do this in both Gansu and Inner Mongolia. We contract all French-fry potatoes for a price of around 180 euros per ton. When we started in Gansu in 2007, we worked with a large number of small growers. Today, we’re working with 45 growers who deliver the necessary 65.000 tons of potatoes. All those potatoes are delivered straight from the farm and we take care of the storage. In Inner Mongolia, Snow Valley has already succeeded in enlarging the scale. Director and co-owner Don Wang of Snow Valley cultivates 1,500 hectares of potatoes annually, with the necessary irrigation and works together with thirty professional growers. They are all located near the factory, which is of logistical advantage for us.’ Expand production ‘In order to run factories successfully in China, it’s sensible to put their management into Chinese hands. They understand the culture and know how things are done in this country. What I’ve noticed is that they work pretty directively. They carry out their specific assignments and don’t think independently about things. It’s because of that that we’re paying a great deal of attention to training. We want everyone to go in the same direction. And we’ve been quite successful in doing this up to now. We’ve seen proof of that this year. Because the ports on the west coast of America were closed due to strikes, we could export Chinese chips directly to South Korea thanks to rapid communication. The buyer also told us that the quality was excellent. That’s a nice way to start, isn’t it? In this way, we’ll be able to quickly serve and deliver to markets that are sometimes too far away for our European destinations’, We want to start producing over 100,000 tons of French fries from over 200,000 tons of potatoes in the coming years’, explains Dick Zelhorst (m) of Aviko. 6 Potato World 2015 • number 2 Pagina 5
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