Despite low potato prices, exports are far from booming, observes William Westhoeve of the family-run potato export company Westhoeve Potatoes in Ouddorp. "You would expect that with prices at this level, demand would pick up, but so far that hasn't really happened," he says.
"Senegal is still closed, even though that market is often open as early as August in other years. We are shipping our usual volumes to destinations such as Mali and Burkina Faso, as well as to our regular customers in Suriname, Trinidad, and Guyana, but overall, the volumes are a bit disappointing. I'm also curious to see what the harvest will look like in countries such as Romania and Poland, but those markets typically don't open until around Christmas at the earliest."
For now, prices remain stable at a low level. "The market gives what it gives, and you never know what might happen. Most of the second lift still has to come out of the ground. Right now it's rainy, and the coming weeks will depend very much on the weather. At least the quality of the potatoes is excellent; I haven't seen a bad batch so far," Westhoeve notes.
That said, the mood among growers is subdued. "They've already had their costs, starting with expensive seed potatoes, and you don't recover from that with a farmgate price of five cents. As traders, we have to work with the market price, but at the end of the day, we also need farmers to make a decent living."
For more information:
William Westhoeve
Westhoeve Potatoes
Hofdijksweg 42
3253 KB Ouddorp
+31 (0)187 68 31 37
[email protected]
www.westhoevepotatoes.nl