“Things are a bit difficult in the onion sector. There’s not much trade in onion sets at the moment, and as a result, growers are panicking. They’re worried they’ll be stuck with the onion sets, but considering the situation, I’m not worried about that. Due to the dry weather, volumes are expected to be much lower than normal. It might be a bit better than last year, when it was completely disastrous, but this year will still be bad,” says Frans Cool of carrot and onion company Frans Cool.
The trader will have to wait and see what the seed onions are going to do, but the non-irrigated fields will yield few large onions, and those volumes won’t be high either. “Right now, prices are between 8 and 10 cents, and that’s not much, but once the seed onions start arriving on the market I expect prices to rise. In other countries, such as Poland, they also had dry weather, and that export hasn’t started yet. The first larger volumes will soon be sent to Africa, so we’ll have to wait to see what prices will do. It’s more difficult for onion sets regarding price, because everyone wants to get rid of theirs,” Frans continues.
“The carrot season is going fairly normally, except for the fields that weren’t irrigated, which are in more trouble. We heard that the carrots in the Northeast Polder are affected by bifurcation and deformation because of the dry weather. More will be lost as a result. Other than that, trade is going fairly normally and prices are alright for the time of year. We can be satisfied about the carrots, although the weather isn’t helping, but we can’t change that, unfortunately,” Frans concludes.
For more information:
Frans Cool
Paul Cool
Bevrijdingslaan 204
9200 Appels, Belgium
+32 52 21 54 46
Frans@coolpaul.be
www.coolpaul.be