The final onions are currently being harvested. “The harvest was quite a bit delayed due to rain, but it’s going well now. We still have to receive about 700 to 800 tonnes, so it’s getting on now,” says Dignus Boone from onion sorting and packing station Bowa from Waarde, the Netherlands. “It was a bit calmer for a few weeks, but demand for onions is now truly starting. It’s becoming a bit more active. There will be even more demand next week, and West Africa will be a front runner in that demand.”
This season, up to week 36, almost 47,000 tonnes of onions have already been shipped to Senegal from the Netherlands. The country, the largest buyer of Dutch onions, recently implemented an import quota, which determined that the Netherlands could retroactively export no more than 65,000 tonnes of onions to Senegal during the period of 1 September to 1 December 2017. “We can now only hope everyone will be sensible, and that they don’t start packing everything immediately, so that the market doesn’t become glutted right away,” Dignus says.
Qualitatively, the batches vary considerably, according to the onion packer. “It’s a shame many onions don’t have the optimum colour because of the rain. One batch is better than the next. It doesn’t compare to last year’s beautiful quality. But last year we didn’t have the pricing either, and we can only hope this year’s onions will fetch a better price. I am positive and see quite a few bright spots, considering the weather circumstances in multiple parts of the world. Prices are stable now, and if demand continues, I could even see them improving.”