The announcement by Aviko’s Potato Growers Commission (ATC) of an average pool price of €25.07/ton for the 2025 harvest is not merely a bad year; it’s a market correction of historic proportions. This figure, which applies to deliveries between weeks 33-44, represents a staggering 89% drop from the average €229/ton achieved over the previous three years. As ATC Chairman André Broeze stated, the commission faced a market devoid of any reasonable selling opportunities—a first in the pool’s history. Dick Zelhorst, Aviko’s Director of Agro & Supply, aptly termed the situation a “perfect storm”: a 10% expansion in European potato area, coupled with a 15% yield increase, met with stagnant demand and congested processing channels.
This crisis is corroborated and contextualized by wider European data. According to the latest figures from the North-Western European Potato Growers (NEPG), the 2024 harvest in its member states (Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France, UK) already saw a 6.3% year-on-year production increase to 25.1 million tons, signaling the oversupply trend. For 2025, preliminary estimates suggest this expansion accelerated. Concurrently, the EU’s processed potato product exports, particularly frozen fries to key markets like the UK and Japan, have faced significant pressure due to inflationary consumer spending and increased global competition. This created a bottleneck: processing plants, full of contracted potatoes, reduced output, leaving the freely traded pool potatoes with no viable outlet. As Zelhorst confirmed, a significant portion was diverted to low-value streams like starch, flake, and even animal feed production, devastating the price.
The situation exposes a critical vulnerability in open-market pool systems during periods of extreme surplus. While fixed-price contracts offered a 40% premium over the pool in previous years, their security also contributed to the 2025 glut by guaranteeing plant intake. The stark contrast between a booming harvest and a collapsing market underscores a systemic issue: European potato production capacity is currently decoupled from both processing throughput and final consumer demand. This imbalance forces a strategic reckoning for every stakeholder in the chain.
The 2025 potato price crisis is a multifactorial event driven by a synchronized increase in European supply and a contraction in demand. It highlights the acute risks of production expansion without corresponding market growth or flexible offtake agreements. For farmers and agronomists, this signals a pressing need for more disciplined area planning, enhanced focus on contract diversification, and potentially, a greater emphasis on varietal selection for non-frying markets. For the industry, it underscores the necessity of developing more resilient market structures and exploring alternative value chains to absorb surplus and mitigate the devastating impact of such “perfect storms” in the future.
