Yields have not been there in Europe and importers are racing for yellow onions. All European countries are buyers, whether Poland, Serbia, Italy or Spain. To cite just one example, the production of Spanish onions has been reduced by almost 50% compared to previous years with areas that have decreased by 30% due to previous poor production.
Tasmanian onions on European stalls
As in 2018, a year also marked by a dry summer, we can expect to find more onions from Australia and New Zealand on European stalls. Europeans go so far as to buy onions from Tasmania, where the weather has allowed a good production. ” The island will first serve its usual customers from Japan and Taiwan, but should be able to send the excess to Europe », Explains to the specialized site Freshplaza, a manager of Saï World, exclusive distributor of the producer Perfecta, while warning that it will not be able to satisfy all the requests.
Egyptian onions hitting the market from April are unlikely to provide much relief to the market. Because in Egypt too the yields are disappointing. “ The Egyptian onion is already selling at prices close to those of the Dutch onions “says a distributor.
“Extreme” marketing campaign according to a distributor
The lack of onions has led to the establishment of export restrictions to guarantee local supply: this is the case in South America, Central America, Pakistan and Morocco. A void which China has taken advantage of by exporting massively, but this will not be enough to compensate for the lack of European onions.
The shortage of yellow onions has pushed up prices and increased the pressure on red onions when the two markets are usually not correlated. A sign of a much 2022/2023 marketing campaign to use the words of an operator in the sector.
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