If you want to know why Terry Curley spent hundreds of thousands last year to replace a perfectly good potato grading line, look inside a bag of potato chips.
Is there a tiny spot that’s just a little bit too brown ? That won’t do.
A thin line of chlorophyll green along the edge? Uh oh.
Such minor defects weren’t even scoreable a decade ago, but today’s powerful electronic colour sensors are forcing producers to up their game, even if it means replacing a perfectly good grading line.
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Curley’s new German-made state-of-the-art optical sorter eliminated six jobs, but reducing labour costs wasn’t the goal. Rather, it’s about the relentless drive for quality.
The Prince Edward Island potato grower and exporter has built a multimillion-dollar operation and earns a substantial premium for his chip stock from Frito-Lay.
In return, Curley must meet the highest possible quality standards.
“It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, you’ve got to make investments to make your product better and better,” says Curley.
“You have to give your customer a reason, besides price, to buy from you instead of someone else.”
There’s a lesson in Curley’s story for any farmer hoping to earn more by supplying a premium market.
Curley, who started with just 30 acres of potatoes at Monaghan Farms near Norboro three decades ago, has been growing chip stock for Frito-Lay since 1988 and exporting for them, in conjunction with fellow Islander Rod MacNeill, for a decade.
They work with several other growers and export 50 million pounds annually. The partners employ a surveillance program the CIA can only dream about. There’s full traceability from seed stock to the bag of chips, no matter where in the world it’s processed.
“We have scouts in every field, every week,” says Curley.
“We know what’s growing where, what our contract growers are putting on for fertilizer and fungicides. Our scout teams are looking at weeds, at pests, how the stands are growing, and as they grow, we’ll take pull samples and do sugar tests at our labs. We’ll scout 3,000 acres every week.”
But it doesn’t stop there.
“We set up loading protocols in various markets and monitor how they store our potatoes over there. We look at the delivery schedules and usually oversee delivery right to their door.”
They deal with shipping and logistics companies, and government agencies. They’ve even lobbied for bilateral trade agreements.
Every refrigerated container has an temperature sensor. Each load has an ideal temperature of 10 to 12 C that must be maintained.
Curley even knows the temperature of the warehouse receiving the potatoes. How? He’s been there. He’s just finished his eighth trip to Asia. Sightseeing is confined to warehouses and loading docks.
“I did some touristy things on the first couple of trips,” he says. “Now we’ve got a lot of places to visit and we jam them in as fast as we can.”
Curley and MacNeill watch for anything amiss: a warehouse that’s a degree or two too cold or too warm, or too much jostling when containers are unloaded. But most of all, they want to hear about problems.
“Being face to face with your customers is very important,” says Curley. “We always ask, ‘look, what’s good and what’s bad? And what can we change to make things better?’ ”
This is the heart of the matter. Frito-Lay knows that perfectly white chips without a hint of a green edge is important to customers.
Curley regularly travels the world searching for something, anything, he can do to help achieve that goal.
“We’re all guilty of being resistant to change. But you’ve got to stay on top or someone will replace you,” he says.
To say Curley is driven by fear would be overly dramatic, but he’s certainly driven. And so should you, if you want to enter, or stay, in a premium market. Because in this game, second best isn’t good enough.
Archived columns from this series can be found at www.fcc-fac.ca/learning. Farm Credit Canada enables business management skill development through resources such as this column, and information and learning events available across Canada.
