It feels a bit quieter this week for the onion processors. That fits in with the onion market, which often shows a wave movement. Among exporters, Senegal is the topic of conversation. They reportedly have enough onions on the quay and seem to have less interest in Dutch onions for a while. Growers don't care much about that. In spite of that, the trade at the farm continues to rumble steadily.
How many onions have been harvested, what can be exported for the new year and what will the market do as a result? The readings on this vary considerably. No matter how we look at it, considerably more onions have been sown and that means that even with an average yield we still have a relatively large harvest. That is apart from the amount of onions in the German border region, some of which will probably also end up in the Netherlands. With a large harvest, a high export rate is needed to keep the market clean. The export figure for week 37 was encouraging in that respect, at over 37.000 tonnes.
The onions may be there, but the growers must also want to sell them. Buyers can't write them down in detail. The fact that growers don't want anything at all is certainly not the case. A depressing supply of onions in temporary storage - which have to go because the potatoes are coming and which some sorters were gambling on a bit - is also not (yet) the case. Farmers and packers are both realistic in the competition and there is a bit of give and take on both sides. According to some insiders, the fact that growers are not giving in to everything is a sign of the times. Things would have to go very strangely if we were to have a repeat of the past two seasons with record prices. But it is certainly not a foregone conclusion that this will be a season with low prices due to a large harvest by definition.
Position or no position
In the background, sorters are busy discussing who has or does not have a position. If one says that the market could still rise in the coming weeks, the competitors quickly say: 'he has onions that are much too expensive'. If someone else says that the market will fall, the comment is: 'he has no onions and is trying to push down the grower's price'. That always happens, but it is even worse now. Or at least it is said more openly.
Exports are a bit quieter this week. A boat has been loaded for Senegal, but it left early this week. Most of the onions for that were therefore already turned last week. Orders often come in at the last minute, some sorters complain. As a result, it is sometimes a matter of trial and error to have everything ready on time, while the total number of tonnes that you do in a day is not even spectacular. In addition, the last onions are arriving from the land, which also creates extra work.
Where grower prices tend to rise slightly, the DCA quotation onion bale price under pressure. The lower end of the listing remains stable, but the upper end is losing some. Supers are hard to come by, despite the fact that there is not a spectacular amount of demand. The onions are generally just not very coarse this year, according to packers.
Read here is the explanation from DCA Market Intelligence on the new quotations.