From The Times

February 2, 2009

Melanie Reid

Aleksander Todorov lives in a world of potatoes. In crates, in sacks, on pallets stacked 15 metres to the factory roof: everywhere he looks, there are big potatoes, small ones, early ones, later ones, dirty and washed ones. Their earthy smell pervades the air that he breathes.

One day this young Bulgarian student hopes to be a computer wizard in the States; in the meantime he is in economic exile in Britain, living, eating, sleeping potatoes, and dreaming of the day he will see his family again.

Since December Aleksander's home has been a big blue shed in the fertile farmland north of Dundee" one of the heartlands of potato-growing in Britain. He shares a static caravan on site with three other student packers and when he stumbles outside at 7.30am each day he can fill his lungs with the sea air blowing off the Carnoustie golf links half a mile away.

We think of migrant workers, if we think about them at all, as some anonymous army at the bottom of the labour market" nameless, downtrodden foreigners passing through, doing the grotty jobs none of us want to do. But Aleksander, who has been christened Eck by his bosses as an honorary Scot, could be my son or yours, a shy yet self-possessed young man far from home. He is 20 but young for his age, a first-year computer student away for the first time. "I came here to earn money for my education, and meet people, and to improve my English. It's important because I want to go to the USA after a couple of years," he says.

His No 1 priority, he says, is to make money. He had to pay his agency, Concordia, about ВЈ250 to get here and another ВЈ90 to the Government for the worker registration scheme.

Since he stepped off the bus before Christmas he has been earning between ВЈ300 and ВЈ330 a week; the same amount for a basic 39-hour week as local workers. From this, ВЈ30 for his rent and fuel bills has already been deducted. He spends between ВЈ20 and ВЈ30 a week on food.

The rest is saved in the British bank account his employer, the Co-operative Group, helped him to set up. Every penny counts. "I live very cheaply," he says. "At weekends we go out to Dundee where we look at the shops and maybe buy a magazine." Does he go to the cinema? "No, we watch movies in the caravan." Nor does he drink.

This self-restraint means he may go home with as much as ВЈ4,000" four times, he says earnestly, what he might have earned in Bulgaria.

"The migrant workers know the value of money," says Bill Longair, the avuncular operations manager at Clayholes Farm. He recounts the evening when electricity on site had to be shut down for three hours for maintenance. The workers were given ВЈ10 each so they could go and have a pub meal and keep warm. Instead, they went on a supermarket dash to Lidl and came out with trolleys brimming with food. "You would never have known ВЈ10 could go so far," said Mr Longair.

"Workers like Aleksander are bright, educated and a delight to work with," said Jim Wilson, the factory manager. "They are here for three months and they work hard, but it makes a difference that they can see the end in sight. They know it's not for ever."

Aleksander starts work at 8am. There's a 15-minute break for a bacon roll in the canteen at 10.15am and half an hour for lunch" ВЈ1.80 for sausage casserole (and potatoes). By 4.30pm the working day is over.

Every week the factory processes 700 tonnes of potatoes" or a million bags " for distribution to Co-operative stores nationwide. In all, 19 different types are graded, washed, dried and sent to the bagging machine, which can spit out a bag of spuds every second.

You have never seen so many potatoes, a small sea of them. The machine can be programmed in English, French, Polish and Czech. Today, on Aleksander's shift, the screen says it is running at just under half speed" 38 bags a minute. The 2.5kg bags move down a belt to a big revolving table, which is where Aleksander and four colleagues " a Carnoustie man and three Poles" queue in readiness with big brown paper sacks.

Once the sack is filled they take it to a stitching machine and then stack it up to six feet high on a pallet, ready for trucking. By my calculations, each packer may lift between 500 and 1,000 kg of potatoes in a day.

"I like the job; it's a good job. It's not hard and I like the boss. He doesn't treat me badly because I am Bulgarian; he treats me the same as the Scots," said Aleksander. Intriguingly, he doesn't understand when I ask him if he ever gets bored. The word is not in his vocabulary.

After work, he walks into Carnoustie to the library to speak to his family on the internet. His parents and his 28-year-old sister live in a big apartment in Russe, Bulgaria. His father is an engineer and his mother works in a shop. They have never been to Britain. When he is at university he lives with them.

He pats his heart and says: "My mum, my dad, my sister" I miss them so much. I miss my friends, I miss my school, I miss the food. My mother makes moussaka, and banica" a dish with eggs and cheese ... the food here ..." It is the nearest he gets to criticism.

Until now Clayholes Farm took migrant workers because it could not get the quality of worker it sought locally. The recession has brought a tenfold increase in applicants and of a much higher standard. But the attitudinal difference remains and for as long as it does Aleksander and his kind may be welcome.

"If you ask a Bulgarian if he wants to stay on and work overtime, he will whoop with delight. If you ask a guy from Carnoustie, he's more likely to say 'I'm going to the football'," said Mr Longair with a wry smile.

Potato packer
Name Aleksander Todorov
Age 20
From Bulgaria
Job title potato packer
Length of service two months
Hours 8am to 4.30pm
Salary ВЈ300 average a week
Best things about Britain good wages and conditions
Worst things the food and the fast driving