33 varieties of potatoes have now been put in the ground in our 2018 trial field. Again this year on site at Henrik Jakobsens farm. It will be exciting to follow all the varieties throughout the season. Thanks to Henrik for spending time and machines on such a lovely spring day

The new plant is already more than half covered, it progresses very fast.

In connection with some changes in our organization Jannie has become responsible for Southern Europe and therefore Louise Cleve has been employed as new secretary for Erik Thorsen. Louise started working at Thorsens March 1st and Jannie is in the process of handing over assignments to Louise, while Jannie also handles our deliveries in Southern Europe.

In order to be able to meet the increasing demand for organic potatoes for the chips and peeling industry, we are constructing a new building which contains storage facilities, as well as production facilities. The aim is to handle the organic part of our production and our production of peeling and French fry potatoes, in the new facilities.
The capacity of the new storage will be 58.000 Hkg in wooden boxes each containing 1800 kg. The storage will be equipped with room cooling and pressure ventilation between the boxes.
The new production plant is designed so we can handle peeling and French fry potatoes better, than we can in our existing plant, as we, among other things, get much better possibilities for size sorting, both on washed as well as unwashed potatoes. Thus we will be better capable of fulfilling the wishes from our customers.

”Store Kartoffeldag”, is the day where the organization ”Danske Kartofler” hold their annual general Assembly. At the same time the industry or affiliated industries have the opportunity to show their goods at Vingsted Hotel og konferencecenter.
Thorsens Chipskartofler of course were represented again this year. All visitors to our stand could taste different crisps from our customers and have a talk about crisp potatoes.

Friday 19th January 2018 we held the annual meeting for our growers.
It is always nice to see so many growers and their employees coming to our grower meetings.
We started out with coffee and bread, Erik Thorsen thanked both growers and employees for the enormous effort they had done in a very difficult season, hereafter Erik Thorsen briefed about the market situation for the past year as well as the plans for the company in the future. He told about the many new initiatives that will begin in 2018.

Anja Ry Milton spoke about the challenges both the growers and Thorsens Chipskartofler have had during the wet harvest conditions. The growers nodded recognizing to those facts she mentioned. Anja ended up thanking the growers for the enormous effort they had done on harvesting the potatoes on time for the deliveries directly for production.

Bearing the wet late summer and autumn in mind we also had a talk about drying the potatoes in containers as this was relevant during 2017 harvest. As a consequence of this Thorsens Chipskartofler has obtained an offer for a joint purchase of containers that can dry the potatoes, this offer was presented to the growers.
Torben Nielsen presented the results and statistics of the year, it was clear that the increase in the contracted price for 2017 had a positive outcome on the results. The statistics also showed that the yield was above average but not at a record level.

Finally Bent Henneberg and Niels Rasmussen from the company Geoteam had been invited to tell us about their company and their products for precision farming. It was obvious that this was a topic of great interest to the attendants and there were some good debates about future agriculture and opportunities in cultivation techniques.

We are getting ready for the Christmas Holidays and wish everyone a merry Christmas with thanks for the year soon gone by. It has been a very exciting year and lots of new things have happened in the company.
2018 is also set out to be a very exciting year with new interesting initiatives which we look forward to.
Finally Thorsens Chipskartofler A/S and Scanax International A/S want to thank all of you for the co-operation in 2017 and wish everyone a delightful Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Home from the Open Days in Holland with lots of new inspiration.
It is always fascinating to get out and meet all our customers, suppliers and other business associates and learn what is happening on the markets.
We have carefully selected the varieties which are going to be tested in our trial fields in 2018, and we hope that one of these varieties will appear to be just the one we have been waiting for.

Throughout the past month, we have been fortunate to have visits by not less than 3 different groups who wanted to see our company.

We are happy to open our doors, and show the production and storhouses and give a presentation about our company.

We have had visits from many different groups, schools and associations.

Last month, Ulfborg Activity Center, Vinding Kultur & Velvære, and Senior Farmers, Herning, have been here.

We have processed Danish Lady Rosetta for 3 weeks. The yields are respectable and the quality is very good in most lots. But it’s not easy to get the fresh potatoes harvested, because of all the rain that has fallen. Today I witnessed how much our brave farmers and truckdrivers struggle, to deliver the potatoes we need.

Thank you to all of you for your great battle out there.