Emsland Group fears for potato supply

Potato Starch manufacturer Emsland Group has provided an update of their outlook on the season. The press release was posted on the Emsland website on September 26, however the article is dated September 19. Since several areas in Europe have seen dryer weather recently, we thought this might be worth mentioning. Here is the article as posted:

Continuous rainfall during last weeks resulted in flooded potato fields throughout Northwest Europe. Especially farmers around Emlichheim and Cloppenburg as well as Mecklenburg-Vorpommern are heavily hit.

It must be expected that due to wetness and decay some areas cannot be harvested. Simultaneously storage problems with rotten potatoes have to be feared. For the time being our factories produce full capacity and with 19 % starch content is at average level. Tare levels score somewhat higher around 7 %.

At present the overall effect on delivered potato quantities cannot be assessed. This outcome depends on weather conditions in the near future.

Recently we noticed that potato futures begin to react on the difficult situation.