It has been estimated by the North-western European Potato Growers (NEPG) that the total planted area will reduce this year by 2.5% to 530,000 hectares. This is based on figures from the five main producing countries. As the UK was running behind in planting at the time of calculation, the figures are based on the UK area from the past season. NEPG took the five year average of 47.2 tonnes per hectare to calculate that the total potato harvest will be 25.2 million tonnes – a decrease of 11.6% from last year.