New Projects

The Higgins Group recognises the need to innovate and improve the potato production and supply chain wherever possible.

Our objectives are to deliver competitive advantage to our company, our customers and our growers in the form of improved varieties, production techniques, supply chain delivery or food processing improvements.

Pre-Processing

 

Engineering initiatives form the basis of two other areas of R&D.  By managing the reception, grading, washing, halving and peeling of potatoes we can add value to the supply chain and return processing value payments to our growers.  By carrying out these processes on the crispers’ premises we can actually manage a part of the crisping process.

 

We have piloted this initiative with two customers very successfully and have seen several significant advantages.  We can better manage quality to ensure rejections are minimised without compromising our customers’ specifications, we can reduce costs and we can better reward high quality growers.

 

In 2012, we opened a major pre-processing facility at one of our customers’ sites.  The investment was in excess of £750,000 and involved grading, washing and optically sorting up to 450 tonnes of potatoes per day.  The line is operated 24/7 to match our customers’ operation and is manned by Higgins personnel.

 

Throughout the season, it has presented quality washed and graded loads into the line and enabled maximum utilisation of crop at minimum cost.