UK: M&S launches new potato variety
The first small volumes of the new variety will be harvested in May this year, and will then be exclusively available in M&S stores nationwide from June to late August, as a genuine loose skinned new potato that provides ‘food for fuel’ for anyone gearing up for, or supporting the UK’s biggest ever season of sport.
In its first season, the crop is being grown by Mark Rowe in Cornwall, Matt Gregory in Suffolk and John Williams in Norfolk to provide continuity of supply through the summer. They will be available in 750g and 1kg packs.
The variety compares well with Maris Peer new potatoes, with a fresh flavour and firm bite making it ideal for serving boiled or steamed with other fresh M&S vegetables or served cold with M&S salads.
Louisa Read, Vegetable Buyer at M&S, comments: “Marks & Spencer is dedicated to offering exclusive products to their customers, and Athlete potatoes not only tick this box, they taste great and are a healthy source of carbohydrate-based energy. With the summer bursting at the seams with sporting events, we anticipate these aptly named potatoes will be very popular.”
Manor Fresh have secured exclusivity on the variety, bred by Agrico UK Ltd, so it appears that there will be no stopping this Athlete in the near future.
For the second year running, Manor Fresh Ltd has been awarded the Marks and Spencer Plan A Innovation award 2012 at the recent M&S Food Suppliers Conference, which took place at Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster, London on April 26th.
In 2011 Manor Fresh won the M&S Food Supplier’s Innovation award for Manor Farm’s state of the art Fresh potato chilling and warming stores and now, in 2012, the company has again triumphed winning the same award again for an M&S unique Perfotec packaging system, which has greatly improved the retail shelf life performance of quality M&S Fresh potatoes supplied by Manor Fresh Ltd.
Manor Fresh has moved away from a one-size fits all approach to fresh produce pack atmosphere, implementing a fresh potato perforation system that allows the pack atmosphere to be controlled differently on a crop by crop basis on a range of Fresh potato products for M&S.