“Dutch importers would reject my onions whenever they wanted”

It was a hard fight for Onion exporter Egypt Overseas. As an exporter for spring and red onions, The Netherlands is one of the company's biggest clients. Ibrahim Shehab, manager for Egypt Overseas, claims he was being treated unfairly by the Dutch importers. He had to make a change and start his own import company to make sure his onions would actually be accepted into the country.

Egypt Overseas has been supplying its onions to The Netherlands for decades, but it wasn’t always a great trade for the Egyptian company. Ibrahim Shehab explains: “The main issue was that Dutch importers could order my produce and then reject the onions at the port once they felt they could get better prices locally. They would reject my onions whenever they wanted, I would get no compensation and would have to find a quick solution to either store or sell these onions for lower prices. I’ve lost over half a million euros in this manner, so what could I do?”

The exporter came up with the idea to start his own importing company in The Netherlands to just sell the onions to himself. And so he started Holland Overseas about four years ago. This way he was guaranteed he could always store his onions without having to sell them at give-away prices. The company has been doing great and Shehab has started to penetrate other markets: “I send about 3000 tonnes of red onions to The Netherlands per Dutch season. But due to Egypt’s excellent location it’s very easy for me to sell produce to anywhere in the world. After The Netherlands I sell most of my onions to the UK and Scandinavia. What I would really like is for supermarkets to contact me directly, to reduce the onion prices.”

Email: egyptoverseas@yahoo.com

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