Sutton Bridge Storage Research Centre officially opened

Europe's leading centre of crop storage research was officially opened at Sutton Bridge by Potato Council's chairman and Scots farmer Allan Stevenson.

He was joined by Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who is a spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, for the brief ceremony at the renamed Sutton Bridge Storage Research centre.

And for the first time for almost a quarter of a century the 10-strong team, led by Adrian Cunnington, will be able to conduct research into bulk storage of potatoes.

He said that work started on the £600,000 project just 20 weeks ago and it took 13 weeks to put the building up. The East Midlands Development Agency, Defra and the EU provided grants, worth about £270,000 or about 40pc of the total investment.

Mr Cunnington, who joined the former Sutton Bridge experimental unit in 1984, said that the six controlled environment stores would gave the potential to undertake research into bulk and box storage research.

“The plan is to have run trials over this season once the store had been loaded up from next month,” he said. And the store will also make it possible to carry out research into crop storage of other food crops including onions, parsnips, cauliflowers and broccoli.

“This will be a world class facility. While there are four centres in Europe, this will be the most modern,” said Mr Cunnington, who said that it would help potato growers to become more efficient by adopting the latest storage techniques.

And his team will be able to use the six storage cells, which provide a total of 42 units, to look at various storage and refrigeration techniques.

Potato Council had taken the decision to invest in the latest facilities because the crop is of vital importance to feed the nation. “We've between 3.5m and 4m tonnes of potatoes being stored every year and we want an industry which can sustain that supply. If we don't have efficient storage, growers won't be able to stay in business and consumers won't be able to buy potatoes at the sharp end.