These are not the busiest times in the carrot trade. The harvesting is well under way and demand is not such that carrots are already being taken out of the cold store. There is discord among washers.
A very large part of the carrots has already been harvested relatively early. And with the rain and snow that we have had, that is a good thing. It is not that nothing is certain anymore, but according to various insiders that is not all that good.
In Eastern Europe they can still get by with their own product. A period of frost could quickly put an end to that, but that is not in the weather forecast. This limited demand from abroad causes irritation among the flushers. Some of the flushers can amuse themselves with regular customers. They have already fixed part of what they produce in contracts long ago and have little interest in putting the price under great pressure with what they have to buy freely. A declining market only results in whining from the regular customers. They accept that they have little or nothing to do for the export.
To wait
Flushers who really have to make a living from export are hammering home the fact that we have to drop further to be able to catch up in Eastern Europe. €20 flushed in a bale is already on the expensive side and if you want to keep some margin between that, you quickly go towards €10 on the grower. A farmer who is stuck because there is insufficient cooling, for example, will go along with that. The vast majority of growers prefer to wait and see.
The different interests, wide quality margin, large price range and relatively little trade make it difficult to compile a representative quotation. The €15 that is still bought to put in the cooling is not really the market but the €10 lots 'just to get rid of it' does not cover the load either. The DCA quotation for both b- and c-carrots comes out somewhere in the middle with a price of €12 to €14 per 100 kilos.
Read here is the explanation from DCA Market Intelligence on the new quotations.