The current situation on the potato market can best be described as in the headline above this article: the potato market wants to, but is not yet ready. That is the trend in the potato market when it comes to the way up. It is usually excruciatingly slow, often in contrast to when the market drops.
Why would you also take the market to a higher price level? The flows are already largely fixed anyway and with a higher price you cannot suddenly buy a lot of extra volume. In fact, by raising the price, the settlement price for the additional delivery kilos is also set higher. The market mechanism has eroded further in recent years, as evidenced by the number of transactions going through the market and the effort it takes to arrive at a substantiated quote. The big question is and will probably remain: how do you indicate a market (high or low) if there is little left of the market?
What moves the market?
For the moment (end of week 2 2023), the market certainly wants and can move to a higher price level, but the impulses are still lacking. The necessary impulses will certainly come from the Belgian 'corner' in particular, where the hunger for potatoes is still great. Producing less would be a solution (stopping the French fries line), but given the sales and selling price of the end product, that does not seem to be the case. The question is, incidentally, whether the buyers of the end product will not dig in their heels, especially now that there is more calm in the energy market, for example; the fries price can therefore go back to a lower price level. Certainly an exciting prospect for processors now that contract prices for growers are going to take a historic step up for the 2023 harvest year, of course you still have to be able to pass on your fries.