The Mallorcan potato export campaign has finally got off to a late start this year due to the rainy and cloudy March. Mateu Export, the main potato operation in Sa Pobla with more than sixty percent of the product exported from Mallorca, began work on the Sa Sort Llarga farm last week and expects the campaign to last until June.
The company’s manager, Joan Mateu, explains that ‘January was warm and in March, when we normally start harvesting, it rained and the sun was scarce, so the ripening of the potatoes has been delayed’. Even so, ‘expectations are quite good and last Friday the first lorry left for the United Kingdom. Then we will reach Eastern Europe and the Scandinavian countries, our main markets’.
In the last season, Mateu Export harvested 13,750,000 kilos of potatoes for export and for the current season they expect the figures to be very similar, barring any significant weather incidents. In this sense, ‘the wet March has caused some minor cases of plant disease, but these do not exceed five percent of production,’ says Joan Mateu.
Brexit, which was one of the major headaches for the sector in recent years, ‘has now normalised and we have adapted our entire system to the requirements indicated to us by the British authorities. Last year there was a change in the system of physical inspection of the goods, and now we know how to proceed’. Another difficulty affecting potato producers has been the increase in restrictions on the use of phytosanitary products for soil disinfection.
Joan Mateu explains that ‘the area planted with potato crops has decreased by 10 to 15 percent this season. The reason for this is the lack of confidence of farmers who have not been able to apply some of the products they were used to and have preferred to plant less in order to better control the development of the plants’. Mateu Export is satisfied with ‘the confirmation from the regional and state authorities that in the 2026 and 2027 campaigns we will be able to apply soil disinfection products that they have not allowed us to use now,’ says Joan Mateu. The problem of the increase in operating costs has arisen again. ‘Production costs have risen to very high levels. This is the case with electricity, fertilisers and fuel, to give three examples that affect us’.
At the agricultural processing company Esplet, the potato harvesting and export season began last week and the first lorries have already left for the United Kingdom. The company’s manager, Joan Company, is keeping an open mind over how the export season will go ‘because it depends on many factors’, but ‘we will fight to make it as successful as the previous ones’. In 2024, Esplet exported almost 10,000 tonnes of potatoes. Company explains that ‘we will see the most activity once Easter is over, with shipments to the UK, Scandinavian countries and emerging markets such as Poland’.
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