The picture on the onion market is somewhat contradictory. When a ship is loaded, the sorters run full, but as soon as it leaves the port, it is also immediately a two-speed downshift. That makes the market a bit difficult to gauge. When you're on top of the wave, parties are a lot more enthusiastic than when it's a little less crowded a few days later.
In the meantime, the growers maintain confidence in the market. The supply of onions from the field has almost dried up and the onions that were temporarily stored in the potato warehouse have almost all been delivered or at least promised. The growers with good onions in the cell are therefore in no hurry to sell, mind you, growers with good onions. According to various traders, there is quite a range of onions with a story, from an MH treatment that did not work, a thin skin to fusarium. Some sorters have noticed that there is a relatively large amount of tare in the lots this year.
Poland is seen by growers as a market where all onions can go, even the lower quality ones. That is true in a certain sense, but not quite how growers envision it. The supply of good onions in Poland is also somewhat disappointing and that is why there are some traders who have bought field crops in the Netherlands. The gross net trade in recent weeks concerns good onions that a Dutch sorter could use. There is also interest from Poland in onions suitable for industry/peeling, but at a completely different price level. And not everyone seems to realize that yet.
Prices are moving towards each other
The demand for onions varies greatly from day to day making it difficult to gauge the mood. In the Netherlands we can sort approximately 50.000 tons of onions in a week. If you look at the latest export figure, the Dutch sorters are now operating at half capacity. The DCA quotation for the bale price of onions remains virtually unchanged. Grower price and bale price are slowly creeping closer together. One of the two will have to bend or crack in the coming weeks. Much will depend on the development of demand in Africa. Senegal opened its borders early this year, but other than that, African buyers are not creating much extra excitement. But we are still early in the season and the cards are not unfavorable for the Dutch onion sector.