According to a report in The Courier, some 1,500 tonnes of Hermes seed potatoes from five or six Scottish suppliers is currently in limbo in Alexandria, after the load was rejected by Egyptian authorities because it failed to meet a December export deadline by one day. The value of the rejection to traders is estimated at £1.5 million.
One of the companies involved was Perth-based Caledonia Potatoes and J&E Smillie, with the company’s Alistair Melrose describing it as an “unfortunate situation through no fault of our own.”
He said seed potatoes destined for export had been delivered to the port in good time to sail but didn’t make the sailing deadline. “That has caused us problems and we’ll lose a lot of money on the back of that,” he said. “So, we do have to question what we’re doing going forward with exports in the next two or three weeks.”
Sandy McGowan of Milnathort-based Cygnet PEP Ltd has recently warned that the risks of the international trade in seed potatoes outweigh the potential rewards. “We had an opportunity to supply several hundred tonnes of seed to a customer in North Africa that wasn’t Egypt and we couldn’t find the logistical solution, but Dutch exporters have put 7,000 tonnes of seed into that market,” he said at a recent conference.
“We have a product that’s in demand around the world, but what we are failing on is the ability to deliver in a timely fashion what the customer wants, and that can’t be laid at the door of the grower in Scotland or the customer at the receiving end – so there’s something failing in the supply chain.”