Ned, the King of Castlecor, is a man clearly outstanding in his field

ON awards night 2017 it was a glorious doubly whammy for Ned English and his family as they first won the Best Agri Led Business at the IRD Duhallow business awards and later in the night were crowned the overall winners.

With a glint in his eye, Ned English told The Corkman that it was “a very nice surprise.”

“It was a very nice win and, genuinely, we did not expect it. There were so many other people there on the night and really this was a lovely surprise,” he said with a smile.

When asked what did the award mean to him and his son Edward and daughter Niamh, he said as a family business they are very much aware of their rural area.

He said on a day to day basis they have 25 or 26 people working for them. “I am very much aware that we have a lot of local people reliant on us and there are about 12 people and 45% of their income would come from us as they are contractors. All of this means an awful lot to me,” he said.

Ned is known as a man who doesn’t sit around and is forever forging the family busines ahead. He said recent years, they have spent around €3million in the development of their business, with many in the local region who benefitted from the works being undertaken – whether it was the pouring of concrete to work done by local builders and local electricians. He believes it is vital to keep money circulating in the local region.

Castlecor Potatoes was established over 40 years ago and even during Ned’s early days of business what he held by the bucket load was a passion to grow quality potatoes. This mantra has served him well as their expertise in growing potatoes is unmatched and that is why their retail, wholesale and foodservice customers have so much confidence in them.

The family grow all of their potatoes in the rich and fertile lands of Munster and they wash and pack their products at their state of the art packing facility at Castlecor in Mallow.

As noted by the English family, they take their responsibilty to the land and the environment very seriously and re-using where they can and setting high targets for energy conservation.

As outlined, Ned is not only a grower of the humble spuds – but equally so he and his family have a huge interest in technology. “Our harvesters have 15 cameras on-board watching the flow of potatoes as they are lifted from the ground and passed over the rotating cleaners. Our tractors navigage using GPS technology during the planting process,” he said.

Their crop records are managed through a computer app and downloaded to their server at head-office. The storage capacity at Castlecor is in excess of 7,000 tonnes of potatoes.

Meanwhile, when Ned isn’t growing his business and working with his hard-working family his other huge passsion is all things GAA.

However, they had a tough time at Castlecor the drought this summer, when Ned declared that conditions had produced ‘a perfect storm’.

“The fields are burning up and nationwide only 10% of potatoes can be irrigated,” he told The Corkman in mid-July. “Irrigation is a round the clock job as we are pumping water from the rivers ... but there’s 60% of our crop that we just can’t get at. I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime.

“But we will survive because that is in us and we will dig in just like all the other farmers across the country, and especially in Duhallow as they are very durable people and will survive.”

Edward, Ned, and Niamh English, and Stiana O’Donoghue of Castlecor Potatoes won the Duhallow Business of the Year Award at the 2017 IRD Duhallow Business Awards.