Scotland is particularly poorly served by the low standards of export facilities available at the country’s ports – its sub-standard transport and supply chain logistics have added to an already difficult situation for the country’s seed potato industry.
As Ken Fletcher reports for The Scottish Farmer, this lack of comparable facilities and network infrastructure to those enjoyed by the competition in Holland and other European countries has stymied efforts to make good the loss of EU markets, a major potato conference heard last week.
Patrick Hughes, who headed up the recently set up Scottish Agriculture Exports Hub, told the annual meeting of the SAC Association of Potato Producers that the sector needed to give itself a fighting chance by working towards rectifying the transport and port issues which had dogged the exporters in recent times.
Sandy McGowan, of Cygnet PEP, who chairs the British Potato Trade Association, said: “We have a situation where demand for Scottish seed potatoes is growing – but what isn’t growing is the ability to deliver in a timely fashion what the customer wants, and that failure can’t be laid at the door of growers in Scotland or the customer at the receiving end – so there’s clearly something failing in the supply chain.”
