An agricultural company owned by mining billionaires Andrew and Nicola Forrest wants to reduce Western Australia's reliance on the east coast for sweet potatoes with plans to expand local production.
Harvest is underway at Brickhouse Station and is expected to yield 1,500 tonnes of sweet potatoes and they will be sold on to HelloFresh, Coles, Woolworths and Aldi.Figures from grower-owned research and development group Hort Innovation showed during the 2023 harvest, farmers in the Bundaberg region of Queensland produced around 80,483 tonnes of sweet potatoes, compared to WA's 915 tonnes.
Mr Boston said there were plans to expand to 50 hectares, and produce around 2,500 tonnes annually, but details of when that would occur were yet to be finalised."We have the right sunshine here, we have the good water, we have the right soil type and we have all-year-round production without having to do it seasonally," he said.Quality assurance coordinator with peak industry body Vegetables WA Joel Dinsdale said reducing reliance on east coast producers would be challenging.
"The volumes they do on the east coast, I think they do it on such big scale that that perhaps means they've somewhat cornered the market a little bit.""There's a fair bit of trial and error and I think that's the challenge," he said.Paul Glavocich grows sweet potatoes just out of Perth in Wattleup. He said the low number of WA grown sweet potatoes is largely due to the weather sensitivity of the tuberous vegetable.