Potato growers feel heat from foreign frozen fries
Europe’s Covid-19 lockdown is threatening New Zealand’s potato-growing industry, as tonnes of chips go unfried at closed pubs.
Quiet streets and empty bars in the northern hemisphere have resulted in an estimated 1.7 million tonne surplus of raw potato material.
‘‘People can’t go out, have a beer and buy some chips,’’ Potatoes NZ chief executive Chris Claridge told Frank Film.
‘‘That means there is a big lump of frozen fries that has got to go somewhere. Our economy is working, they are sending it here – it is as simple as that.’’
Claridge is looking for government action to protect New Zealand potato farmers from the influx of frozen fries grown and processed in Europe undercutting their locally grown equivalent.
Already, packets of imported frozen fries from Belgium are being sold at nearly half the price of locally produced chipped spuds in New Zealand supermarkets.
‘‘It is very difficult for New Zealand farmers to compete with that,’’ said Ross Hewson, a potato farmer in Canterbury where near 70 per cent of the country’s crop is grown. ‘‘I don’t think anyone has any issue with competing but when that competition does not reflect the full cost of producing the product, then it has to be unfair competition.’’
Claridge said Europeans were selling below the cost of production. ‘‘We know what it takes to grow a potato. We know what it takes to process a potato, to turn it into frozen fries and to send it to an international market.’’
There is a lot at stake – New Zealand produces about 150,000 tonnes of frozen fries a year. But Europe exports about 400,000 tonnes in one month.
‘‘They can swamp us in a heartbeat,’’ Claridge said.
But Potatoes NZ was not going to back down. – Frank Film