Potato News from United Kingdom

William Chase, owner of the only premium potato-based vodka distillery in Britain, plans to take on much larger, mass-produced luxury brands in the U.S. market, Chase told Reuters.Unlike all large-scale vodka producers, Chase Distillery grows, mashes a...

Seabrook Crisps is looking to develop a second factory within the next five years. The company, which in the last three years has become the UK’s fastest growing potato crisp brand supplying all major supermarkets, intends to have a second factory up a...

The snacks and biscuits division of UK manufacturer United Biscuits could be parcelled out to different buyers, according to a research firm's analysis of the market following media reports the company is to be sold by its private equity owners.

A new potato processing variety has yielded well in trials in a difficult growing season.The new variety from Potato Innovations (PI), known only as YP0243, has yielded nearly 35t/ha of marketable ware in the trials.YP0243 is due to receive registratio...

Reuters reports that private equity firms Blackstone Group LP (BX.N) and PAI Partners are considering selling Britain's United Biscuits for more than 2 billion pounds ($3.06 billion). Reuters refers to a person familiar with the matter.   Blackstone an...

After last weeks speculations in the UK media on what would happen to the Food Standards Agency, the United Kingdom's food safety watchdog, here is the REAL plan, outlined in a press release by the Food Standards Agency, the Department of Health and th...

Asda (United Kingdom)has withdrawn some of its own-brand Salt &Vinegar, Variety and Boxed Crisps, because the salt and vinegar flavouring used in the crisps contains trace amounts of wheat gluten. This means the products, which are available in var...

Issues surrounding potato storage such as efficiency will be one of the many topics on the agenda at the Storage Event to be held at Sutton Bridge Crop Storage Research in Lincolnshire on 2 September.Professor Gareth Edwards-Jones from Bangor Universit...

Potato growers gathered together for an update on the latest legislative, technical and environmental issues facing their sector at the East Midlands Potato Day held near Spalding in Lincolnshire.

Walkers, the UK’s No. 1 crisps and snacks manufacturer, has announced English Roast Beef &Yorkshire Pudding as the winner of its Walkers Flavour Cup campaign, the world’s first ever ‘crisp tournament’. The Sunday lunch flavour gained more than  ...

Stories circulated yesterday reported that Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, would be announcing the break up of the Food Standards Agency.  They also suggested that this break up was an indication that the Government had ‘caved in’ to the pressure of...

World Potato Congress Inc (WPC Inc) President, Allan Parker and Potato Council Chairman Allan Stevenson, announced today that Edinburgh has been selected as the site of the 8th International World Potato Congress to be held in May 2012.It is the first ...

Heavy rainfall at the start of the second week of July has benefited parts of Northern European, where the dry conditions are affecting the whole European potato industry. Most areas have crops two weeks behind last year. New crop tuber size and yields...

Potatoes have been the centre of classroom activity as thousands of Earlies, grown as part of the Potato Council ‘Grow Your Own Potatoes’ project, have been unearthed.Nearly half a million pupils have had a hand in growing their own potatoes this year ...

The Food Standards Agency is to be abolished by Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, it emerged last night, after the watchdog fought a running battle with industry over the introduction of colour-coded "traffic light"warnings for groceries,...

During the International Potato Processing and Storage Convention (IPPSC), recently held in Edinburgh, Scotland the Belgian Electronic Sorting Technology (BEST), manufacturer of electronic sorting equipment, looked back at the European potato harvest o...

The number of cases of a potentially devastating soil-borne bacterium that could cause significant potato production problems in Scottish seed potatoes has doubled.The Scottish Government yesterday admitted it had found two more cases of Dickeya solani...

The Scottish seed potato industry has reacted with anger to the confirmation of another crop of potatoes being infected with the highly infectious and transmissible potato disease dickeya solani which was found in a sample of ware potatoes grown last y...