Things aren't going smoothly in the onion trade. Consignments of onions with defects are constantly appearing, dampening the mood in the field crop trade. At the other end of the spectrum, exports aren't faring much better. Buyers from Central and Eastern Europe, in particular, are currently being missed.
It's only early March, so we reasonably still have three or four months left on the 2025 harvest. This realization doesn't seem to be so strong in the onion sector at the moment. Several insiders report that there's a decent supply from growers. Some of these are onions with quality issues. That's dampening the market sentiment somewhat.
It's certainly not true that there are no good onions left in Dutch warehouses. There are also some very nice, large batches. However, traders say prying these onions from a grower isn't easy. The difference between what growers ask for and what processors offer doesn't even have to be huge, but at 1 or 2 cents, the sale falls through.
There's certainly demand for sorted onions. The only problem is that the sizes requested don't quite match what comes out of a batch. Demand for large and super-sized onions is simply good. If they're nice and white, they can easily be shipped to Southern Europe, and if the color is a bit off, England is asking for them.
If you're sorting a load of supermarkets, you'll also have two Middel trucks. Finding a buyer for those Middel trucks is much harder. As a sorter, you don't want to leave those Middel trucks in front of the drying wall for too long this time of year.
Competition in Eastern Europe
In the first half of the season, it's Africa that's pushing for the finer sizes. Now, exports to Africa have dropped significantly, and if they want onions there, they're more interested in larger sizes. Eastern Europe usually hits the market for the smaller sizes sometime in the spring. That's not the case yet. Buyers in countries like Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic can still find something closer to home. Austria, Germany, and Ukraine are offering competitive prices, and transport costs are also lower. Dutch onions can't compete with that for now. Traders say there's still some clearing to do before Dutch onions are in. For now, it's mostly a matter of gritting your teeth and hoping things pick up in a few weeks. Growers seem to have more faith in that than traders, by the way.
The DCA Onion Bale Price is under some pressure this week. As mentioned, the problem is mainly with the finer sizes. Because sorters have difficulty sorting these, fewer onions are being turned. As a result, supermarkets are also less available, even though there is demand for them.
Read here the explanation from DCA Market Intelligence on the new quotations.