Besides the frontrunner, Africa, more and more countries want Dutch onions. "The Caribbean and the Far East are approaching us now. We're coming off a very high market price, which fell slightly. That offers more export opportunities. It seems the market is stabilizing; customers feel that too because plenty of onions are leaving," says Maarten van Damme of Dacomex.
"That broader spread is great. Lots of onions went to Africa, but the current bale price of €0.47-€0.49 is still far too high for that continent. Those high prices could eventually hamper exports. So far, that's not happened because markets are fairly empty. The season started later because of the rain in July. Last year, we were already loading in full by late July; now exports only got going by until mid-August."
"Yields vary vastly throughout the Netherlands. In the southwest, they're disappointing, while the yields are reasonable to good elsewhere in the country. But again, the large onions come from North and East Brabant," the exporter says. "Fortunately, the onions' quality is good. The onion sets - where we did see occasional quality issues - are mostly gone, and what's coming in now, seed onions-wise, are of fine quality. These are excellent to place in containers for a few weeks for the far destinations."
The red market is developing completely opposite to last year. "It's tough to get hold of those. Last year, red onions were cheaper than the yellow ones, now they're much more expensive. Red onion bale prices are around €0.90. There are far fewer red onions available, and demand is quite high. Some destinations want red onions, so I don't see prices dropping level just like that either," Maarten concludes.
For more information:
Maarten van Damme
Dacomex
Tel: +31 (0) 166 662 550
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.dacomex.nl
