Michael Blake, managing director of New Zealand Onion Co. Ltd exporters, Seagrove Farms Ltd. growers and Tasman Seed Ltd. onion seed breeders, all based in New Zealand, recently told OnionBusiness.com that Southern Hemisphere company appears to have “dodged the world onion bullet” thus far in 2017.
Mike told us that, while the onion market has been volatile, NZ Onion has not felt the brunt of it.
He said, “The onion market for the NZ producers didn’t look that positive in early 2017 with very low prices in the European and U.S. markets, and we were not looking forward to the 2017 season.” But he continued, “Following my visit to Fruit Logistica in Berlin in early February, we were very fortunate to negotiate some good contract prices above the costs of production in the key markets for our onions in France and Germany with some of the main supermarkets and prepackers, and we felt a little more at ease.”
This year’s harvest, he said, started well in February in the main production area of Pukekohe, and “the key growers took the opportunity to get as much of the crop off the ground as they could in good order.”
"With the Northwest exporters in the USA supplying good quality through early 2017 and putting pressure on prices in the Asia markets of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, we have had to just sit back and wait for the market to come to us looking for better quality.”
Mike said, “That now appears to be happening and what we lost in sales in the U.K. now appears to be able to be marketed into the later markets of Asia as the quality in the Northern Hemisphere product quickly declines as spring kicks into gear.”
source: onionbusiness.com
