Vitacress have an exclusive commitment to supply Marks & Spencer with freshly dug new potatoes from Portugal for the months that UK growers cannot provide genuine new potatoes.
The traditional potato-growing season in Portugal is from April through to June, but production and technical director for Vitacress UK, Dr Steven Rothwell, says that the season has been extended to meet the needs of the UK market, now harvesting new potatoes from October to June. “We have been the only supply of real, loose skin new potatoes to the UK from late 1980 until the last couple of years when Geest QV joined us by contracting crops in Portugal and growing some in Spain,” he says. “We supply M&S, which remains the only UK retailer to offer a real new potato year round. Most retailers sell set-skin stored potatoes and pass them off as new, such as new UK new potatoes at Christmas - consumers have forgotten what a new potato is.”
Vitacress grew over 4,000t in the 2003-04 season in Portugal, up from 3,000t grown in 2002 and representing a 33 per cent increase year-on-year. The Vitacress employees based in the Alentejo have pioneered modern farming operations in a once forgotten area of Portugal, and over the past decade, the area’s potential has been developed. The progress in Portugal is a result of several factors; the company’s industry experience, excellent growing conditions due to the sands, warm Atlantic streams and mild winters, the Santa Clara reservoir providing 250 million cubic metres of irrigation to the area, access to good local labour, and Vitacress’ ability to offer both grower and packer resources.
The potatoes - mainly Maris Peer - are harvested, graded, washed and chilled, packed and outloaded daily. “We have a state-of-the-art, multi-million pound, and high-care factory to do this in Portugal,” says Dr Rothwell. A new packhouse was completed in 2003 and investment continues in new field equipment such as a new harvester. “To harvest daily throughout the winter months, we grow on sand that can be worked after or during heavy rain. We operate two sophisticated harvesters to ensure we can meet the daily deliveries.”
The facilities in Portugal have the capacity to collect from multiple sites in order to achieve the specific size/yield ratios required by M&S. Vitacress’ production experience in Odemira has taught it to grow approximately 10 per cent of the crop oversize in order to produce the average order breakdown for the UK retailer - currently 10 per cent of yield is oversize (42mm+), 60 per cent regular (32-42mm), 20 percent baby (28-32mm) and the remaining 10 per cent are Mini (20-28mm).
“Our UK sendings are transported in double-manned, refrigerated artics which take less than 40 hours to arrive - from harvest to our customer’s stores in three days,” says Rothwell. A fleet of 30 lorries is dedicated to transporting potatoes and salads every day from Portugal to the UK using Fresh Express - a joint operation between Vitacress and a large Portuguese transporter, and the potatoes can be outloaded from the Azenha sites within 12 hours of harvest.
In 2003, Vitacress built a high-specification, seed-potato store on its Portuguese site, and today grow several hundred tonnes of their own seed. Rothwell says: “We are a licensed Portuguese seed potato producer. This is critical, as you need properly aged seed to plant in August, and UK seed is lifted too late to be ready to plant in the same summer. We also contract southern English seed to plant later in the year...we are planting from August through April.
“We cannot rely solely on Portugal to grow for a daily harvest in January and February, so we have also developed a site in southern Spain near Vejer. The production from Spain is harvested and delivered to the Portuguese factory daily during this period, with next-day outload of the finished product.”
Over the last 12 to 18 months, Vitacress has significantly improved the quality and the marketable yield per hectare from its Odemira-based farms, by focusing on optimising the physiological age of seed. Irrigation has also been improved, using Enviroscan, to accurately monitor soil moisture changes in the rooting zone, and nutrition, which includes vast work on fertigation under pivot irrigation.
“Over the last season, the growing conditions in the Alentejo have been reasonable to good, as rainfall does not impact us. We use fertigation on many sites to ensure any leached fertilisers can be replenished post rain, with minimal waste. We are producing a highly perishable, top quality product that calls for cold chain and agronomic expertise, developed from many years of watercress and baby leaf salad production. The short-shelf life dictates daily lifting against tightly programmed production and sales.”
Little has changed in yields per hectare, but the focus of Vitacress’ Portuguese production programme has been to improve export tonnes per hectare, and this has increased considerably in recent seasons because of substantial input from agronomy. The majority of production for this season is Maris Peer, but constant new variety trials are being tested. Rothwell says that so far Maris Peer remains the best of all - a round variety with good flavour and whiteness. “We do however have some exciting possibilities under development with varieties that will be exclusive to Vitacress. We are constantly trying to get the message out that new potatoes should be loose skinned and harvested within days and not weeks before sale in UK,” he says.
Previously, to meet their supply obligations, Vitacress contracted some tonnage under its own agronomic supervision to two or three neighbouring growers. “We now grow all the volumes ourselves because M&S demand high quality produce. We find the only way to ensure we meet the M&S challenge of Field to Fork is to operate this way. We also supply wholesale markets, and pack washed new potatoes for the Portuguese multiples which is a fast-growing area,” Rothwell adds.
For the future, he explains how Vitacress is developing new sites in the Alentejo. “We need free-draining sand in frost-free areas close to the sea. We rotate our soils to preserve their production capability. A current project involves working with the Portuguese government to rejuvenate part of an old pine forest. The pines are old and on over 10,000 hectares of sandy soil near the coast. We are working with the Portuguese Forestry Department and are beginning a scheme that involves cutting the wood, clearing the land, developing irrigation, growing potatoes and break crops for six years. Afterwards, we will replant new pine trees, which will benefit from the cleared land and irrigation facilities for establishment, and later as a fire fighting resource. These developments have taken several years of negotiations involving the minister for agriculture and we will grow our first crop on the site this spring.”
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