France: New potatoes at less than €200/t, the campaign looks set to be difficult
Frédéric Laviron, a broker at Éts Roussineau, noted a very quiet end to the potato marketing campaign and a price for new potatoes that fell to less than €200/t at the beginning of July.
"At the end of the campaign, the market is really very calm , without any transactions. All origins are available , whether it be Spain, Portugal, Italy, Israel…" indicates Frédéric Laviron, broker at Éts Roussineau. Germany has started its harvests, as have the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.
The end-of-season markets closed one after the other , and the last trucks of the old harvest were delivered at the end of June. Today, there are still significant quantities of potatoes in refrigerators, sometimes of very mediocre quality, while the clearance, animal feed, and biogas markets are clogged.
The primeur offer is also there, from Drôme to Vendée and as far as Brittany, not to mention the fact that high temperatures are causing a drop in consumption.
In this context of high supply and lower demand, the price of new potatoes fell to less than €200/t at the beginning of July.
The industry is also not positioning itself; fries stocks are full. Prices, which remained stable until March, fell in April and May, before collapsing in June .
It’s not all doom and gloom, but the first half of the 2025-2026 growing season is likely to be difficult . Crops are suffering from rising temperatures, and the area planted has increased. Farmers who can’t store will sell, and prices will remain low. Those who have storage facilities will wait.
We are in a situation we did not see coming, and have not experienced for several years. The only question remains the summer climate. If the scorching temperatures persist without rain, yields will be affected and the situation could be completely different.
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