For the Fruit and Vegetable Forum, an event held in Milan on 20 November 2019, where we saw the twentieth edition of Speciale Frutta & Verdura, Romagnoli F.lli took part in the discussion regarding the potato production sector.

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Potatoes are one of the most important product categories found in the fruit and vegetable areas of modern retailers (they account for about 10% of horticultural sales, and generally use up an equivalent amount of space). However, the amount of profit created is slightly less as they are basic food products, whose sale prices are subject to careful consideration by distribution chains.

Faced with both a huge range of new product categories entering this area over the last few years (such as, for example, nuts, exotic fruit, etc.), and an increase in the number of assortment possibilities of existing categories, the space available for each type of potato is becoming increasingly smaller. To compensate, for many years, potatoes have not been subject to a revision of the approach used for this category as a whole, there has just been the arrival of new characteristics (loose, local, potatoes from around the world, etc.) without the old segmentation being revised according to what they are used for, which, however, is actually no longer being implemented because it is impractical with the size of the packaging used. In this regard, it is to be noted that today less than 3% of the overall sales of potatoes, using weights established within large-scale retailing, is made up of packs smaller than 1.5 kg, a segment that has seen substantial growth in the last year.

However, on the one hand, consumers are becoming increasingly gourmand, and, driven by their “passion for cooking” instead of their daily needs, they require specific products for the different ways they use them in the kitchen. On the other hand, the number of members within families has significantly lowered. In such a situation, buyers are becoming less and less concerned by price and more by product performance (hold, creaminess) and emotion (the right potato for making particular recipes), therefore creating great opportunities both in terms of consumer loyalty and profitability for companies throughout the production chain.

Thanks to its research and varietal innovation, Romagnoli F.lli Spa is able to offer a new segmentation of potatoes that optimises how space is used, by defining the amount of profit generated and placing potatoes into purpose-based categories. Consumer research, panel tests on the individual varieties to identify homogenous varietal groups, studying assortment clusters, and performance measurements are the basis for this work.