Wiskerke Onions switched completely to the new onion sets this week. The volumes will be limited during the first few weeks, according to Chayenne Wiskerke. "The very early varieties are not suited to being exported to the faraway destinations yet, which means we mainly focus on the countries around us. At the moment, demand is still weak. Some have not benefited from the most recent spike yet, having waited too long, which means there are still quite a few old onions on the market that need to get out. Those don't bring in any money, and get in the way of the new ones."
"The past season, the Dutch onion sector performed very well, delivering a great quality of onions to clients right until the last week. If you study the export figures, we as a sector did great. Last season also shows that we're not dependent on Russia, but we do depend on a shortage elsewhere in the world to get our huge volumes of onions across the border. Brazil saved the last onion season, and I expect that Brazil will start to import Dutch onions at the start of this season as well. But the price will have to come down a bit to compete with the new Spanish onions."
"In general, I am very optimistic. In a year with 6-7% more onions, we will have to work hard to sell our volume, but there are definitely enough possibilities for selling the new harvest. The export to Russia still comes under the boycott, but this is only the second part of the season. Now we'll have to focus on Africa and the Far East. There are opportunities there, because of some climatological problems in the eastern part of the world. There's still a lot of local produce in Africa at the moment, but I expect a good demand at the end of August/early September. In the whole of Europe, onion set yields are reasonably good, which means the European market doesn't offer much perspective yet. The Netherlands is a country of volumes, so price-wise we'll have to get to a competitive level in order to sell the available volumes later, but that will be late July/early August," Chayenne concludes.
For more information:
Chayenne Wiskerke
Wiskerke Onions
Tel: +31(0)113 382210
Chayenne@wiskerke-onions.nl
www.wiskerke-onions.nl