Biofresh Safestore offers discount to visitors of new potato event

Biofresh Safestore is offering discounts to visitors at the new Potato Days event in September, as it celebrates two decades of installing potato sprout suppressant systems in the UK.

The provider of potato sprout control technology will give show visitors who commit to a site survey a 10 per cent discount.

Organised by DLG (German Agricultural Society), Potato Days is a brand-new event that will be held at Dyson Farming’s Nocton site near Lincoln on 4 and 5 September.

It is a field days event, where the complete potato production and supply chain is on show, combining trade stands with crop plots, expert talks and live machinery demonstrations.

Over 150 companies are exhibiting and around 5,000 visitors are expected across the two days.

In the UK, ethylene has been used commercially since 2003 as an alternative to more traditional chemical-based sprout suppressants. It is considered an effective solution for extending the life of potatoes without chemical residue.

Operations director of Biofresh Safestore, Jeremy Barraclough, said: “Potato Days is looking like it will be a significant event for the UK potato industry.

“We’re very much looking forward to attending and marking 20 years of using our expertise in Ethylene-based potato sprout suppressions to help store managers extend the life of their potatoes.”

He added: “Biofresh was established in 2003 to commercialise discoveries made by Newcastle University’s School of Biology, with the first Safestore system being installed in a UK pre-pack store the following year.

“Since then, we have gone on to install systems treating more than half a million tonnes of potatoes at farms and potato stores across the UK, Europe and further afield.”