PATCOR

Generating commercial opportunities for potato chips producer

About Pactor

Patcor S.A. is a family business in Huancayo. The business is owned by father Patilla and his two sons Christian and Carlos. They used to manufacture potato chips, but due to the increase of other national and international companies they start to focus on the production of a niche market in native potatoes since August 2006. The native potatoes are growing on fields in the mountains around Huancayo. The production process takes place in the lower plant of the house, where they have built their own installation to process the chips. Patcor is able to produce an average of 320 kg of potatoes a month into 80 kg chips. They sell the potatoe chips under the brand name 'Inca's Gold'. Pactor generates 2500 Nuevos Soles of profit a month. The chips are sold at the local market and at the national market mainly in restaurants and discotheques in Lima. Samples have been sent to potential clients in the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, the US and Spain. The social impact of pactor is that it gives direct employment to six people. The product comes in a Bio-friendly Polopropline (BOPP) bag, wit inert gas. Indirectly Patcor generates an income for the producers of the native potatoes, who are in general very poor farmers.

Business case

The objective of Patcor is to increase the production capacity by improving the production and packing process, while on the other hand the demand to the chips has to increase to upscale the volume. The problems they are facing are:

• the high product price to massively enter the market

• low volume sale at restaurants and bars

• high costs of wrapping and packing and processing costs

• a lack of modern technology to optimize the production process

Patcor in cooperation with Separ requested SharePeople to match Patcor to experts in the field of marketing and production processes. Richard Oré Tapia (Separ) worked together with Henriette Boerma (Ernst & Young), Jeroen Haverkorn van Rijsewijk (Accenture), Martin Beindorff (NedTrain) and Noortje Braat (NedTrain) to deliver an (international) marketing plan and recommendations for the production process.

Results

Analysis

The business case team has worked very close with Christian from Patcor to get to know all the details about the production process, sales and marketing. Additionally, they investigated the local competition in the native potato market and interviewed several stakeholders. A visit to the International Potatoe Center strengthened their in-depth knowledge on native potatoes, the national and international market and poverty. The investigation leads to a SWOT-analysis, a target auditing profiling research and a marketing plan.

Advice

The team of SharePeople came up with interesting conclusions. For example, the threat posed by future competitors turned out to be larger than Pactor had calculated. Moreover, they concluded that the quality of the product would have to be improved in order to enter the international market. The group advised Pactor to invest in assuring their place on the local market while working on product improvement and increasing quantity of production.

Impact on the partners

Patcor was very impressed by the work of the team and is willing to recommend the service of SharePeople to other businesses as well. The network of Patcor is expanded after the visit of SharePeople. Patcor is presenting their business on fairs, what brings them into contact with important business partners and potential buyers. The organisation has improved their production capacity and processes. Also, they have arranged a BMP and HACCP certification and are more aware of delivering good quality. For the Dutch participants they are aware of what it means to work in a different culture and they have learned a lot.

Follow up

Richard from Separ keeps informally involved with Patcor. The Dutch team has visited the factory of Lays and experiences between Patcor and Lays have been exchanged.