With over five million hectares of potatoes, China is the biggest potato producer worldwide and the Chinese government plans to double the area to 10 million hectares by 2020. Today though, just a fifth of the Chinese potato crop is harvested by machinery, and Grimme reckons there is a huge potential for further mechanisation. With this in mind, the German potato and sugar beet equipment specialist is investing around €13 million in a 13,000sq.m. production facility and office building on a 3-hectare site in the harbour city of Tianjin.  Grimme has had a subsidiary in China for more than five years, but this new production site, which is located roughly 80km southeast of Beijing, will allow the company to duplicate the high quality and standards of its German-made kit. Production at the new facility, which will be managed by Franz Grimme’s 27 year-old son Christoph, is scheduled for spring 2017.