Sales of medium onions biggest concern for onion sorters

It's not going smoothly in the onion trade. Parties of onions with some defects keep appearing, which dampens the mood in the trade of this field crop. On the other end of the spectrum in export, things are not much better either. Especially buyers from Central and Eastern Europe are still missing. It's still early March, so reasonably we have about three to four months to go with onions from the 2025 harvest. That awareness does not seem to be very present in the onion sector at the moment. Various insiders report that there is quite a supply from producers. Partly, these are onions with quality issues. This does bring the market mood down a bit. It's certainly not the case that there are no good onions left in Dutch storage. There are also really nice, large batches among them. According to traders, picking such onions from a producer is still no easy task. The difference between what producers ask and what processors offer does not even have to be very large, but for 1 or 2 cents, the deal does not go through. There is demand for sorted onions in itself. The problem is only that the sizes that are requested do not entirely match what comes out of a batch. The demand for large and jumbo onions is quite good. If they are nice and white, they can easily go to Southern Europe, and if the color is a bit off, England is interested. If you sort a load of jumbo onions, you also have two loads of medium onions standing by. Finding a buyer for those medium onions is a lot harder. As a sorter, you also don't want to leave those medium onions too long for the drying wall at this time of year. Competition in Eastern EuropeIn the first half of the season, it's Africa that attracts the finer sizes. Now, exports to Africa have dropped significantly, and if they want onions there, they are more interested in coarser onions. Eastern Europe usually enters the market for smaller sizes sometime in the spring. That is not the case yet. Buyers in countries like Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic can still find options closer to home. Austria, Germany, and Ukraine are offering competitively, and the transport costs are also lower. For now, we cannot compete with Dutch onions in that regard. According to traders, some cleanup is still needed before Dutch onions are in the queue. For now, it’s mainly about holding on and hoping that things pick up a bit in a few weeks. By the way, producers seem to have more confidence in that than traders do. The DCA Packed Onions Benchmark Price is slightly under pressure this week. As mentioned, the problem mainly lies with the finer sizes. Because sorters struggle to get rid of these, fewer onions are being handled. As a result, jumbo onions are also less available, even though there is demand for them.