News on Potatoes in Retail from Oceania

West Australian potato growers want their potatoes back on dinner plates every day to help ease a massive glut. The advertising campaign - named Todatoes - began Saturday night with the start of a prime-time television advertising campaign.

In New Zealand, produce company T&G is launching a new brand of low carb potatoes with the memorable name 'Lotatoes'.

Heavy rain, particularly in New South Wales (Australia), combined with a cold winter have led to a tight potato supply and high prices.

After Oakville Produce (formerly known as the Moraitis Group) entered receivership earlier this month, questions arise how that could happen to a company good for almost a quarter of the Australian Potato market.

The Mitolo family will be the first Australian farmers to produce Europe’s popular potato variety, the Gourmandine.

Providing Australian consumers with more information on the package such as the potato variety and their uses would encourage them to buy more potatoes, according to the latest wave of Potato Tracker research.

Potatoes are becoming more appealing to Australia’s innovative home chefs ('Eager Explorers') who are searching for the next exciting food trend, according to new consumer research.

Consumer research in Australia, Potato Tracker, has shown that Australian consumers prefer to purchase pre-packaged potatoes, with one to two kilogram packages as the ideal sizes.

It appears that many Australians don’t know their King Edwards from their Kennebecs, with the latest wave of the Potato Tracker consumer research project indicating that some people can’t name a single variety of potato, despite being the most commonly purchased vegetable commodity.

The new ‘purple bliss’ potato (grown in Tasmania and bred in Idaho) could become a family favourite now that it has begun producing commercial quantities, and 20 tonnes are making their way to supermarket shelves.

The potato industry within Australia needs to come together to develop a plan and make potatoes appealing again from a marketing perspective, to solve the oversupply issues plaguing the industry. That is the message from grower Tony Cummaudo, of Cummaudo Farms.

Tony Galati, owner of the West Australian Produce Chain 'Spud Shed', wants to add up to four extra stores to his existing Spud Shed network over the next few years and is working on opening up export markets for Western Australia potatoes.

The Potato Marketing Corporation of Western Australia has announced plans to take legal action against Galati, who owns a chain of grocery stores called the Spudshed as well as being one of the state’s largest growers.

Potatoes continue to be seen as an important staple for Australians according to the latest wave of the Potato Tracker project, with survey respondents indicating that they consume the commodity an average of 14 times per month.

A shopper has been horrified to find a snake curled up in a sealed bag of potatoes bought from Woolworths.

AUSVEG remains wholly unconvinced of the benefits of a grower-funded generic potato marketing campaign despite claims from the Potato Marketing Corporation of Western Australia that the initiative has been a success in that state.

Potato growers in Western Australia have invested heavily in a potato marketing program aimed at stopping the decline in consumption per capita of fresh potatoes.

The weather might be warming up [well, in Australia that is, not here in Canada...PP] but that isn’t stopping Aussie consumers tucking in to a hearty serve of mashed potato, according to the latest wave of the industry-funded Potato Tracker project.