With the holidays approaching, things got a bit quieter in the onion market in recent weeks. "But this week two more ships left anyway, so with that we are still correcting what we left out the previous weeks," says Wouter van der Beek of Bruin Export. "And a few lesser weeks are also part of it, on average we still end up with a beautiful weekend export around 40,000 tonnes so far."
So far, nothing but optimism, but for the new calendar year it will still be interesting, Wouter realises. "We are in a field of tension between a bale price that is not too high and a farm price that the grower cannot get out of and the grader cannot earn anything from. So something will have to happen, but with fewer sales, it doesn't seem logical to me that the bale price will go up, because I expect disappointing exports in January."
© FarmTrade
"I will be interested to see what the proportions are in the new year. Currently, onions are sold in the bale for 18-22 cents. Subtract the transport and sorting costs from that and you end up with 13 or 14 cents. Farmers are not lining up at those prices yet. And if I had good stuff, I certainly wouldn't sell it. At the same time, there are a lot of problem onions in the market. Fortunately, Poland is now starting to ask, a nice quantum went there this week."
"And maybe the refurbishable onion category is another way for graders to earn something," the exporter continued. "January and February are never the best months for exports, although there are rumours that Africa stays on the market longer. But there are some onions in the shed as well. Personally, I do expect the high-quality stuff to become really scarce."
"With the red onions, the price of the coarse grades is holding up nicely, but you can hardly get rid of the fine ones. And I think the quality of red is really poor this year. There are a lot of problems with thrips, but also fusarium and bacterial problems. Those sales are also not running at all yet. And of these too, there are plenty of onions in total, but for the quality segment ultimately not too many available."
For more information:
Wouter van der Beek
Bruin Export BV
Mob: 06 - 542 022 42
[email protected]
www.bruinexport.com
