Dutch onion sorting and packaging plant Ajuin serves mainly peelers and exporters. "Some local greengrocers will top up a pallet, too, and we try to get a piece of the African market from September to late December," says Jan van der Spek.
"This onion season began very differently from recent years. That's also to be expected for once. The recent high prices' disadvantage was that we had to turn some customers away and those aren't returning any time soon. That would've worsened had it been another expensive year. So, this year's cheaper onions benefit our export position. Onions remain primarily a speculative crop, but for exports, it's obviously much better if prices stay at €0.20-0.25. Then, customers know where they stand. You make less profit, but sales-wise, that would be better."
Jan also thinks the onion sets' quality is better this year. "With the seed onions, how the plots with downy mildew develop remains to be seen. There's still supply pressure because of the lower quality and storability. There are plenty of onions, but we do expect many small ones throughout Europe. That's the case with red onions, too, which are much pricier. The large ones will maintain those prices, but who knows what will happen with the smaller ones," he says.
A development at Ajuin is the use of the OnionCam, a compact TechNature grader that has, since last year, been sorting onions by internal quality, too. "TechNature's owner, Wouter Bac, lives in our village, and we mentioned to him a few years ago that the onion market offered potential for such a type of grader. Back then, there was no other supplier in the compact machine segment."
"Meanwhile, Flikweert has also jumped into that gap. I'm not saying one machine's better than the other, but externally the OnionCam has got it right, and its internal sorting is coming along. It will take a year or so to get it completely fine-tuned, but we definitely see a future in it," Jan concludes enthusiastically.
Jan van der Spek
Ajuin
Julianastraat 114
2751 GA Moerkapelle
T: +31 (0)79 593 3338
[email protected]