Estimation of Demand for Processed Potato Products and Processing Quality Potato in Punjab

Abstract

Potato processing in India has grown very fast during the last decade. Anticipating this development well in time Indian premier potato research and development agency, Central Potato Research Institute (CPRI) Shimla, changed its focus towards breeding processing potato varieties during early 1990s. As a result two potato varieties, viz., Kufri Chipsona–1 and Kufri Chipsona-2 were released during 1998 specifically to cater to the needs of potato chips manufacturing industry. Due to increased availability of raw material (processing grade potatoes) the largest producer of potato chips in India, Frito Lay India, got optimistic (Das, 2003) and aggressively expanded its existing plants at Channo (Sangarur, Punjab) and Pune (Pandey and Sarkar, 2005) besides establishing new plant at Sankhrail (West Bengal). The fast growth of potato processing industry in India induced CPRI to further release Kufri Chipsona-3 (for potato chips manufacturing) and Kufri Surya (for French fries manufacturing) during 2005. During this time Haldiram and G.P. Foods ventured in potato chips making and marketing while, other big names like ITC (John, 2005) and relatively lesser known names like Vimal Oil and Foods Ltd. (Bhatt, 2006) also designed their plans to venture in this business. The Indian subsidiary of the world’s largest French-fries multi-national corporation, McCain Foods India Ltd. established a frozen French-fries factory of 30000 metric tonnes (MT) per year capacity in Gujarat during 2006. With this factory the total French fries manufacturing capacity in India increased to 46800 MT per year in 2007 (Rana and Pandey, 2007). The above discussion presents an impressive picture about the potato processing sector in India. However, detailed information on state/region wise demand for processed potato products or their raw material requirement and factors influencing this demand is lacking. Potato processors do undertake studies/surveys to estimate such requirements/information time to time, but their results have not been published.