Onion train keeps going in volatile market

The onion market is often unpredictable and fickle, but this season it is very bad. In February we have the Fruit Logistica and later carnival. The real buying wave usually follows immediately afterwards. This season, buyers arrive early on the market and the demand for onions is already very good for this time of year. Several sorters are just not that enthusiastic about selling and ask good money for the onions. This is necessary because if additional purchases are required, these are also very expensive onions. But in any case, the onion train continues to roll on.

Although the onion sets are going into the ground and the first seed onions have already been sown, it will still take some time before the new harvest arrives. It is difficult to substantiate with hard figures the size of the stock for the 2022 harvest, but we can say that there is no oversupply in Europe.

Interest
The high onion prices in Europe almost certainly attract the interest of exporters from outside Europe. And there is actually quite a bit of room on the European market for extra onions. Quality is a point of attention. If you are unlucky with Egyptian or South African onions, this sometimes leaves much to be desired. New Zealand onions are generally of good quality, but there is uncertainty about the harvest. New Zealand has had serious flooding a few times and the onions there do not seem to emerge unscathed.

The DCA quotation Bale price of Onions shows a very large spread. While sorters normally know fairly well what the costs should be during a week, we are now almost at daily prices. This makes it difficult to correctly display the current bale price. There are major differences between the start of the week and the end of the week and also between sorters themselves. The high demand is in the supermarkets and the price has now far exceeded €80. At the other end of the spectrum, there are also sorters that are well under €60 for triplets. The range of over €30 is very extreme.