There is a lot of demand for Dutch onion packers and exporters at the moment. "All of the destinations in which we are active are currently buying plenty of onions. The front runners are the African countries of Senegal, Ivory Coast and Mauritania, partially because Morocco doesn't have onions available. It is now important to be careful that we don't send too much, to ensure the market doesn't collapse as it did last year, meaning a lot of money is lost at the end of the season. However, I do think that many people in Africa learned from the situation that occurred and are being a lot more careful," states Maarten van Damme of Dacomex.
"Outside of Africa, the Caribbean is heavily involved. There are also growing volumes going to the Far East, but we are less active there. All in all, the situation doesn't look bad. I expect that we will definitely see be able to maintain these export volumes until the end of the year. "What happens after that, depends in large part on Senegal. But a destination like Brazil can come back on the market without warning. For the time being, it looks good with varied exports," says Maarten. "The entire sector is nice and busy and all packing stations are running at 100%."
Despite the good demand, the exporter does not expect there to be an increase in the price immediately. "A huge number of onions have been harvested over the last two weeks. All exporters have a lot of product available and buyers are taking it easy for now. The bale price is still at a stable level between 18.5-19 cents, but I predict this will fall rather than rise, and there are also parties in between that simply cannot be stored until after New Year due to the wet conditions. These are fine onions in themselves, but you can not store them for long and therefore they are the first to be discussed "
For more information:
Dacomex 
Provincialeweg 46
4695 RK Sint-Maartensdijk
Tel: +31 (0) 166-662550
maarten@dacomex.nl
www.dacomex.nl