According to EastFruit analysts, onion imports to the European Union from Egypt, New Zealand, South Africa, Turkey and other countries continue to break records, but this does not lead to weakening prices. At the moment, wholesale prices for onions have already broken all previous records and continue to grow, and reports of low stocks are coming in with enviable regularity.
In particular, Germany, the largest importer of onions in the European Union, in the first months of 2019 increased onion imports from Egypt, Turkey and South Africa, and even imported the first consignments of onions from Uzbekistan.
Great Britain is the second largest European importer of onions after Germany, in the first two months of the year it increased its imports from South Africa by thirty times, from China by three times and from India by 2,6 times. France bought more onions from India and even Kenya, Poland increased its onion imports from Kazakhstan, that is, each country tried to find a way to cover the deficit.
In March - April, the supply of new crop onions from New Zealand began. Suppliers are very pleased with volumes and prices and continue to increase exports. They note that European buyers are increasingly agreeing to even onion gauges that are non-standard for them, in order to cover the existing shortage of products on the market. Nevertheless, given the real volume of production, most likely New Zealand will not be able to increase supplies by more than 10-15%. Egypt could be an alternative, but there are still a lot of questions about the quality and safety of the onion supplied, which hinders the volume of imports from this country.
Recently, VTA Nederland reported that at the beginning of April, stocks of onions in the Netherlands were exhausted by 86%, and of the remaining stocks, more than half were already contracted, although usually at that time of the season there were still about 30% of stocks of which no more than 30% were contracted. In general, reserves were 78% lower than last year and 76% lower than the average for five years.
Thus, it can already be stated that importers from the EU were not able to find a worthy alternative to locally produced onions and lower product prices. Therefore, until next season, product prices are likely to remain relatively high.
Source: https://east-fruit.com/