A blog for the potato processing community: Warsaw Convention

I am sitting in my hotel room in Warsaw, getting ready for my journey back to Walla Walla, and thought I would jot some notes on the conference that finished last night.

I am referring to the International Potato Processing & Storage Convention that is put on by the people (Crier Media Group) who also issue the magazines Potato Processing International and Potato Storage International. For more details on the conference, click on http://www.potatoconvention.com/.

Warsaw, I think, is a great venue for this kind of function, being well situated in one of the fastest growing regions for potato processing facilities. The city has an impressive Old Town center, the food was quite nice, and the weather could not have been better. I just love dining al fresco, but only in nice weather!

The conference content was quite solid and well-received. I don't intend to try to describe each presentation here, nor do justice to the effort all of the presenters made to get their ideas to us. But I will mention a couple of sessions: Steve Johnson's piece on controlling sprouts with ethylene gas in storage was both enlightening and quite funny (He had an image at the end of two potatoes with sprouts arranged to look like they were hugging- quite clever!).

Some of the statistics on the Ukraine and Russia potato markets and grower situations there, given by David Brenchley who was pinch-hitting for Andriy Yarmak (who couldn't obtain a visa in time) were eye-opening. Scott Valette laid out some of the economic consequences of running dryers at less than optimum. The short story there: by the time you count all the energy costs to remove more water than you should, plus the cost of yield loss incurred by removing that same water, it seems that dryer optimization has huge payback.

Perhaps the surprise hit of the week was Ole Solberg of Hoff Norske Potetindustrier. Ole is a maintenance manager who is down-to-earth, real-world in focus, and yet able to express his thoughts in a way that is both informative and quite entertaining. Ole described his experiences running a French fry line that has no sorter- instead, an ADR 4 is used for the defect control. His results are: very nice yields compared to his previous sorter-only system, and great control of product quality.

I presented a piece on the principles behind such a line layout (using ADR as the primary defect removal device, rather than sorters). At some point soon, I will lay out the concepts of that presentation on this blog site. But the short story is that if your plant encounters incoming strip defect levels over 20% on a regular basis, you really need to consider such a concept. Anything else will carry huge yield and/or productivity costs, or will not produce export-grade product. If you are reading this and want more insight more quickly than I write, please contact me at treardon@key.net for more information.

The one disappointment of the convention was the lack of processors represented. We had some folks from a few such companies, but I was hoping (perhaps, expecting) more of a representation from local processors. They simply did not show up. And, I must say, it was their loss more than mine- I really think that they could have learned some things in this convention that would pay back far beyond the cost and time needed to attend.

And I will also say a bit to the larger potato processing community: I know that there are company secrets out there amongst the big processors that will not be shared in this venue. I recognize that regarding some of the topics presented this week, those companies are completely in-the-know without the convention. But I also am convinced that such time always exposes new thoughts and ideas, and in a relaxed context away from the "quadrant 1" issues, where thought integration can occur. I would strongly encourage you all to consider attending next year's conference on Prince Edward Island (June 23-25, 2009). You will see me there, with more new ideas.

Tim