A 'Smart Storage' solution for the potato sector to reduce waste by 110kt and improve packer profitability by £108 million per annum

"Throughout the UK, over 5.5 million tonnes (mt) of potatoes are grown every year (AHDB data). Potatoes grow in different size and shapes and there is vast variability across the field.

Currently there is no full set of quality and size data available at the time of harvest to maximise marketable yield. Only sample data is available which does not cover the crop variability across the field. This also leads to crop imbalance during the packing process.

Here lies an opportunity to gather the whole data at harvest for size and yield to allow the grower to make informed decisions about their crop and potentially increase the marketable yield and revenue by selecting the right crop at the right time.

In order to maximise marketable yield by minimising crop losses due to potato imbalance, we aim to develop a 'smart storage' solution for potatoes in order to maximise efficiency of store loading and unloading which will enable growers to select boxes from cold store where a higher proportion of crop meets the size profile of a given customer order; and find alternative end users for crop imbalance (crop which does not meet customer order size profile) PRIOR to removal from storage."