Processing Onions Costs a Lot of Money Everywhere Right Now

The export of Dutch onions has not been very fluid these weeks. "Processing onions cost a lot of money everywhere at the moment. Transport and processing costs have increased dramatically. In addition to sick leave, the situation in Ukraine makes it difficult to trade. Personally, I think the news in the media communications about our sector is too positive. For me, processing onions has been a catastrophe since January," says Lindert Moerdijk of the Dutch company MSP Onions.

"There is no shortage of products in Europe, Brazil is not buying Dutch onions yet and the market in the other overseas destinations is very quiet. Thankfully we have been able to ship onions to Côte d'Ivoire for a long time. Shipments have been limited in the last five weeks, with only around 17,000 tonnes per week. While the figures are still higher than last year at this point in the season, onion stocks in Europe are very large at the moment."

“The market price used to be the reference point that growers and processors looked at when buying and selling onions, although this is not true for today's market. The current market prices, which are similar to prices per bale at the moment, are too high for processors, so there is a total imbalance in the market, producer prices are not bad at all, although that is good, lowering prices at origin will solve nothing, we have to look for alternatives for sales and processors will have to reflect on how to handle situations like this.”

Processing Onions Costs a Lot of Money Everywhere Right Now PDF