Only a few weeks remain for chefs and caterers to enter Aviko’s competition to find the UK’s best Chef Hack. The winner will be rewarded with £500, a month’s supply of Aviko products and the ultimate chef’s toolkit worth £350.

Coming out of one of the hottest summers on record, it is good to know we are also in for a mild autumn and can expect the higher than average temperatures to last until the end of October.

We kicked off our Meet the Team series in our last newsletter with Matt Leach one of our UK Account Managers. This time we are speaking with Judit Kossen, General Quality Manager, giving you an insight into what goes into providing our frozen potato products.

Aviko is on the hunt to find the nation’s best Chef Hack and is calling on chefs and caterers to share their top tips and recipes for making life easier in the professional kitchen.

Aviko has launched a series of Chef Hacks videos showing how to tap into the latest taste trends from Indian street food to breakfast on-the-go.

Each quarter we are interviewing someone in our business and sharing insights into what their role involves. See what goes into providing our frozen potato products from coming up with concepts in the NPD Team to checking all the potatoes we use meet our strict requirements in the Quality Team. Up first is Matt Leach, one of our UK Account Managers.

With this summer set to be one of the warmest in recent years, consumers will be taking advantage of the nice weather and dining out – making it a prime opportunity to increase your profits. Here are our top tips for getting your menu summer-ready:

In last newsletter I advised that the EU-5 2018 acreage was expected to shrink by around 2% - 3%, in response to the extreme high potato production in 2017 and resulting low daily prices. The 3% shrink would give an acreage of 565.975 ha. and an EU-5 production of 26,7 mio tons, based on an average yield of 47,2 tons/ha.

With the recent announcements of high profile restaurant closures, it is clear to see the Casual Dining market is going through a time of change and is evolving to become truly customer-orientated. We are seeing that operators who focus their efforts on service and creating extraordinary experiences are proving successful in this period of uncertainty.

Following a search for the nation’s best breakfast dish, Aviko has crowned Bar Dos Hermanos as the winner of the Great British Breakfast competition.

To assist operators in providing high quality home deliveries, Aviko has launched the new Premium Crunch Fast Food Fries which stay piping hot and crunchier for longer.

Over the past few months the processing industry has expanded its capacity substantially with a record production of over 29 mio tons. However, through processing potatoes in the EU-5 this lead to an imbalance between supply and demand.

The perceived health benefits and delicious taste of the sweet potato has led to a boost in demand for this root vegetable, and desire for the unique taste shows no signs of waning.

For my final newsletter of 2017, I have made six predictions for 2018 which we will re-visit in one years’ time:

In the last edition of the newsletter, the EU-5 production of ware potatoes (for fresh consumption and processing) for crop year 2017 was estimated at 27 till 28 mio tons. On the 3rd November the NEPG, The North-Western European Potato Growers published their adjusted figure of 28,9 mio tons.