Waterman Onions wants to make the prices of onion seed more transparent and fair. Due to the intermediary trade, smaller growers in particular are now the victims of unfairly high prices. Waterman has therefore launched a website on which the prices of the seed are public.
“We have been receiving complaints from growers for years that the sale of onion seed is not transparent. They often do not know in advance exactly what they have to pay the trader. Prices are kept vague and sometimes linked to feed-in contracts, whereby the grower is more or less forced to sell his onions to the trader," says Wim Waterman, director at Waterman Onions.
There are growers who have been purchasing onion seeds for years at too high a price. “That's why we have the website www.uienzaadonline.nl set up. Growers can buy onion seed there at competitive, transparent prices. We do not do this for profit, but purely based on the demand of the growers.”
Cooperation from seed companies
“Some of the seed companies are cooperating, but not all yet. The suppliers also do not want to upset the middlemen,” says Waterman. When asked, Jaap Jonker, sales manager at de Groot en Slot, indicates that de Groot en Slot is cooperating, but not because of the complaints about the intermediary. “We would like to try whether sales can also be done online. After all, everything is sold via the internet these days. We see this as a test and if it doesn't work well after a year, we will stop. Sales are currently still traditionally done through advisors and we think this is a good system in itself.”
“Problems with brokering are no reason for us to participate in this. The intermediary also invests energy and money in this sale. For example, fuel and hourly wages, and they also advance money. So we don't think it's surprising that they receive compensation. Moreover, we charge a fixed price, the intermediaries also sell our seed for a fixed price,” says Jonker.