When you imagine the English
farm, you may think of a small quaint operation with stone fences
surrounding the fields.
The new reality in the United Kingdom is far from that – today
the specialty crops farms are big and integrated. The change has been
forced on growers there as the food retailers in the United Kingdom
have consolidated quicker than in the United States. The country’s
largest retailer – TESCO – now commands a 27 percent market
share.
Greenvale AP is one of these operations that have grown to meet the
fresh potato needs of these giant supermarket chains, which require
a huge volume of fresh produce year round.
“We are fully integrated from seed to the table,” said
Paul Coleman, head of technical and agronomy for Greenvale in Cambridgeshire,
England. “We do all of our own work on variety development and
product development to meet the needs of the customer.”
The company has morphed over the past 10 years as potato growing and
packing operations merged or were purchased by the company. Today
it is the largest potato operation in the United Kingdom and has a
market share of 13 percent.
Greenvale has 110 member growers and 100 non-member growers. The members
grow 32,000 acres of potatoes and sell their crop exclusively to Greenvale.
The company employs 18 agronomists to help the growers with planting,
crop protection and harvesting decisions.
The company has three packing facilities, five trading offices and
a dehydration plant. Greenvale can supply all sectors of the industry
from retail and processing, to the specialty fish and chip outlets
The flake operation was built three years ago and has the capacity
to process 22 million pounds of potatoes each year and has sales of
$12 million. Greenvale Foods supplies flakes to the food and snack
industries in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. The
operation can also produce organic dehydrated potato flakes, to be
included in such products as processed baby foods.
Seed operations
Greenvale’s
seed growing operation is the largest supplier of seed potatoes in
the United Kingdom selling more than 100 million pounds of seed to
UK potato growers and exports to countries like Egypt, Algeria, Israel
and Sri Lanka.
The operation grows 2,500 acres of seed. It offers its own brand of
seed potatoes with tighter disease tolerances than normal industry
standards. It is also leading the development and marketing of new
varieties and branded organic seed.
Unique
packaging
Greenvale works
closely with the retail chains to develop new and unique packaging
and offers new varieties and convenient packs.
Greenvale has developed a whole line of packaging exclusively for
its biggest customer, TESCO.
One packing plant is devoted exclusively to TESCO product and runs
24 hours a day, seven days a week, year round to supply the chain.
One the most popular items for TESCO are baby potatoes that are 1.6
inches or less in size and are usually a white variety called Maris
Peer. They are sold in small 1-1/2-pound packages that sell for $1.50
– about $1 per pound. Sales of baby potatoes have been growing
more than 10 percent a year in the United Kingdom since they were
introduced eight years ago, Coleman said.
Greenvale’s packing line for the baby potatoes is sophisticated.
A roll of plastic is fed into the line and a die casts three trays
in a row and continuously feeds them under a filling mechanism.
The packing machine fills each tray with exactly the right weight
of baby potatoes using a computer to find the best combination of
potatoes to make the weight.
A plastic film is then rolled over the tray and attaches. When the
consumer buys the package, they can take it home, peel off the film
and transfer the baby potatoes in a boiling pot of water.
Greenvale has also come up with a microwaveable pack for TESCO that
comes in 1-pound plastic trays with a top that peels off. These potatoes
are washed and the entire package can be put in the microwave and
cooked for seven to eight minutes. They are usually the Maris Peer
variety but must be refrigerated and only have a three-day shelf life,
Coleman said.
Most produce is now sold in reusable containers that are plastic totes
about the size of a half-bushel box or large plastic bins with wheels.
The change was forced by strict environmental laws that tax packinghouses
for disposal costs of any packaging that can’t be re-used.
“The tax is different for all types of packaging,” Coleman
said. “Plastic is more than cardboard. We don’t use any
cardboard because it is just too expensive to pay the tax on it all,
so we’ve gone to all re-usable containers, and it has worked
out well.”
The grocery stores use these re-usable containers in their displays,
and consumers have reacted favorably, Coleman said.
Samples of potatoes are pulled from the packing line each day for
a shelf-life assessment test. The different kind of packs are put
in a room on a shelf for the day they were packed. They are evaluated
each day for breakdown, greening, sprouting and development of skin
diseases. Greenvale likes to have a five-day shelf life. It is shorter
in the United Kingdom because they cannot put on a sprout inhibitor
at packing time.
Greenvale has also come up with a sealed, clear poly bag packaging
for its larger 11-pound packs. The poly has small microscopic holes
that bring the oxygen level down and CO2 up within the package to
stop greening and sprouting. The oxygen level is normally 21 percent
when the potatoes are packed, but that goes down to just 14 percent
when they are packaged, providing the potatoes with a much better
environment.
Country-of-origin labeling is also the law in the United Kingdom.
“It’s been required forever,” Coleman said.
Labor is very hard to find in the United Kingdom, and 50 percent of
the packinghouse workers at the plant that packs for TESCO are from
Portugal. Many people from Eastern Europe also come over to work in
agriculture jobs. Greenvale has gone to more automated system and
uses robots.
Traceability
system
All of the major
chains in the United Kingdom are now requiring stringent traceability
programs from produce vendors.
All loads of potatoes that are brought to the packing plant are given
a unique code and traced all the way to the grocer’s shelf.
The potatoes are first given a quality assessment that determines
variety, size and grade. The potatoes are then evaluated to see if
there is any disease, rot or bruising.
The traceability system also documents the time the load arrived,
the serial number of the truck they rode in, the driver’s name,
when he left the yard empty, what storage the potatoes came from,
the field they were grown in, the line it was packed on and a full
history of pesticides applied to the crop. Once packed, each package
of potatoes is given a unique traceability code. All of these records
must be kept for three years.
“We must be able to provide the entire history all the way back
to the field it was grown in within six hours,” Coleman said.
“TESCO will come in with a package of potatoes and test us.”
