The Reynolds family have been producing the finest farm fresh potatoes from the rich soil of County Meath for more than half a century. To ensure that industry-leading standards of excellence are maintained across every facet of this exceptional family-run business, investment continues unabated.
Over the decades, the Reynolds name has become synonymous with quality potatoes. From their extensive and high-yielding farmland in and around Garlow Cross, County Meath, Pat Reynolds & Sons Ltd. produce a variety of popular potatoes to suit every taste and requirement, including Lady Rosetta, Kiebitz, Verdi, Rooster, Maris Piper and Salad Potatoes.
Pat Reynolds Snr. and his four sons grow and harvest some 900 acres of quality potatoes, which are washed, graded and packed in their own state-of-the-art packhouse, offering ideal handling and storage conditions. Fresh from the family farm, ‘The Humble Spud’ is available through Tesco, Super Valu and many other local stores.
All Reynolds Family Farm potatoes are tasty and nutritious. Their Irish Rooster potatoes, for example, are deliciously light and fluffy, ideal for steaming, exquisite when roasted. The care and attention to detail that goes into every crop – a skill and professionalism acquired through decades of experience – ensures that only the finest produce makes its way onto shop shelves and consumers’ plates.
Having an ideal growing environment to produce the finest potatoes is one thing but ongoing investment in labour, machinery and facilities is also vital to ensure the consistent production of high-quality, fresh potatoes, particularly in the current economic climate, where overheads continue to rise for all producers while downward pressure on income results in tighter margins than ever before.
To this end, the Reynolds family business continues to excel against all odds. “With the price of fuel, fertiliser, machinery and land all going up, producers are being squeezed,” notes Shane Reynolds, who runs Pat Reynolds & Sons alongside his father and three brothers.
“We have a lot of people working here at the moment and the business is under pressure so something will have to change. From our own point of view, all we can do really is stay focussed on growing high-quality local produce on our family farm, as we have been doing for more than 50 years. You can’t beat fresh local produce. Our full range of potatoes are available in all the local Tesco and Super Valu supermarkets as well as many of the small, independent shops in and around us.”
As well as retail outlets, Reynolds Potatoes have also been supplying fellow Meath company Tayto Snacks with potatoes for their range of products for more than 40 years and also supply Dublin-based Sam Dennigan and Co., one of the country’s leading fresh produce companies.
In order to efficiently, economically, sustainably and successfully plant, grow, spray and harvest the very best potato crops that money can buy, investment in machinery is a prerequisite. As well as maintaining all their existing gear in tip-top condition, the Reynolds family have also invested in some significant fleet upgrades in recent times:
“You have to keep on top of it,” says Shane. “If you are not prepared to invest – in both people and machinery – then you will fall behind. We got a new Grimme 470 potato harvester, which just finished its third season, and we also bought a new Fendt Rogator self-propelled sprayer from Farmworks Machinery in Dublin as well as a Dewulf four-row planter from Quaile Machinery.
“You simply have to move with the times. The window is getting smaller for both planting and harvesting, so you need bigger and better machines that can get through the work quicker.”
To ensure that there is some variety to the business and to avoid being caught with all their proverbial eggs in one basket, the Reynolds family also crow a large amount of corn to complement their renowned potato enterprise.
Typically, the current potato harvesting season runs from around the middle of August through the months of September and October, when it’s all hands on deck to get the tasty humble spud out of the rich Royal County soil and en route to the discerning consumer, who can count on a versatile, all-round high performer packed with flavour.
“We had a really good harvest this year and conditions were close to ideal up until the last couple of weeks, when there was a lot of rain,” Shane concludes. “All in all, it was a good harvest and we can’t complain.
“As a family business, we take quality seriously and we are fully committed to that. These are certainly challenging times for producers due to soaring costs but we’ve been growing quality potatoes here for more than 50 years and that’s what we intend to keep doing.”
Consistency, quality and hard work have been key to the remarkable success of this model family business, which merges tradition with innovation to remain very much at the forefront of potato growing in Leinster. Generations of the Reynolds family have demonstrated uncanny skill and expertise to work the land to telling effect for more than half a century and one gets the distinct impression that there’s much more to come.
By the land, for the land and of the land.
Pat Reynolds & Sons Ltd.,
Gerrardstown,
Garlow Cross,
Navan,
County Meath.
Tel: 046 9023989
First published in Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 11 No 1, January/February 2023
