“Demand for peeled onions is still increasing every year. One of the biggest reasons for this is increasing demand for ready-to-eat meals and convenience products. These use onions on a large scale, and we as onion peeling company can profit from that,” says Joeri Ongena of the company of the same name. “We’ve noticed ready-made meals are popular in winter months, and demand for raw vegetables and salads increases in summer.”
Joeri and his wife Veroniek Maes
Despite the high demand, it’s possible to meet this with the supply this year. “The bad harvest as a result of the dry weather is playing tricks on us this year. It’s still difficult to work. Red onions in particular are difficult this year, because volumes are too low. There’s still a bit of Dutch red onion at the moment, but these are far too expensive. We’re constantly looking at other continents for onions this season. We’ve never experienced a season like this before. We thought we’d be out of work by February, but it wasn’t as bad as that. Now that other countries are expecting new onion harvests, and quality is good, we expect to be able to work until the new season,” Joeri continues.
Sizes
“As a grower and onion peeler, we weren’t much affected by quality problems among domestic onions, because these had been processed fairly early on, so that we could keep an eye out for good, healthy batches. Now that temperatures appear to be rising a bit, problems could occur, but stocks are practically empty. On the other hand, we were affected by the small sizes a bit. We need size 60 for our peeling machines, but most onions were smaller, so we had to look for large onions elsewhere,” Joeri says. “If the weather stays good, the first new Belgian and Dutch onions will be on the market late June at the earliest. We’re hoping these’ll grow quickly.”
Barbecue
“We’ve developed a new line for the coming season, to cut the onions into 3-centimetre parts. We’re anticipating the coming barbecue season with this line, because the parts can be used for satay and shashlicks. In the past, we manually cut the onion parts, but we want to market the product in larger volumes,” Joeri explains. The company has seen popularity of red onions and shallots increasing considerably in recent years. “We mostly see peaks in demand when TV chefs like Jeroen Meus use these products in one of their dishes.”
Uienschilbedrijf Ongena was founded by Joeri and his wife Veroniek ten years ago in 2009. “We started in a room of only 75 square metres. We had an onion peeler to add value to our own onion production. The company has grown a lot, and we’ve had several expansions. We’re always working on innovating and developing new products. We recently became IFS certified again, because we’re trying to improve each time,” Joeri concludes.
For more information:
Joeri Ongena
Uienschilbedrijf Ongena
Weststraat 62b
9180 Moerbeke-Waas, Belgium
info@ongena-uien.be
www.ongena-uien.be