Not many onions have been sorted in the last two weeks. That's understandable, of course, with Christmas and New Year's Eve. Opinions vary considerably on how the market will develop in January. Some are confident about the first weeks of the new year, while others anticipate a slow period. The quality of the onions also plays a major role, of course.
Ramadan falls early this year, and if the new local onion harvest in West Africa is a bit late, some traders say we could still send quite a few onions there in the first few weeks of January. The fact that quite a few potatoes are also heading that way could also be beneficial. "A full boatload of onions might be a bit much, but if you can ship half potatoes and half onions, you're still talking about 2.500 or 3.000 tons of onions," says an insider. Record exports are certainly not expected, but combined with container shipments, some traders say it doesn't look too bad at all.
Other traders are a bit less optimistic. They believe there are too many caveats. No one wants to put the last onions of the season on the docks in Senegal. According to one trader, that could put a bit of a dampener on things.
Nerves of steel
Trade at the grower's is also quiet, but overall, farmers with good, large onions aren't nervous. In other years, there are sometimes panic sales around this time from growers whose onions aren't holding up as well as expected. That doesn't mean there aren't any mediocre onions in Dutch storage. There are plenty of batches with a story, but growers seem to be betting that we'll see another buying round soon.
Whether that happens remains to be seen, of course, but the reasoning is not illogical. Several sorting companies have limited backlogs because they expected exports to take a significant dip in January. If things go better than expected, they'll have to sell them. The price will still be an issue. According to several insiders, the difference between good quality and coarse or fine with a story is likely to increase rather than decrease.
There were no major changes in the price of baled onions this week. The range remained largely unchanged, but some traders noted that more was now being done at the lower end than at the higher end. This does put some pressure on the market for sorted onions.
Read here. the explanation from DCA Market Intelligence on the new quotations.