“This year’s lower prices on onions will benefit our position in the export market”

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Dutch onion packaging and sorting plant Ajuin is primarily used by peelers and exporters. “Some local greengrocers may fill up the pallets also, while we strive to capture an ounce out of the African market between September and the end of December” adds Jan van der Spek.

“This season of onions began different from previous years. This is also not unexpected at least once. Recent high costs’ drawback was having to reject some customers which isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. It would’ve been worse the situation had it been a costly year. Therefore, this year’s lower prices for onions are a boon for our export position. The onions are a mostly speculative crop. But in terms of exports, it’s best to have prices around EUR0.20-0.25. So, the customers will know what they are getting. The result is lower profit but the sales will be far more effective.”

Jan believes that the onions’ flavor is higher this year. “With the seeds which are in the fields, how well the plots with mildew that is downy is yet to be determined. The supply is still under pressure due to of their lower quality and storage capacity. There’s many onions available, however it is expected that there will be a few smaller onions across Europe. This is the case for the red onions that are more expensive. The larger ones will continue to maintain these prices. But who is aware of what might happen to the smaller ones” He says.

A innovation at Ajuin involves using the OnionCam an extremely compact TechNature grader, which has since the beginning of last year, sorted onions based on internal quality also. “TechNature’s manager, Wouter Bac, lives in our town We mentioned to the company a couple of years in the past that the onion market could be a good candidate for this sort of grader. At the time there was not a single manufacturer within the small machine category.”

“Meanwhile, Flikweert has also been able to fill in that area. It’s not that one is superior to the other, however, externally, the OnionCam has made the right choice and the internal sorting process is advancing. It could take one time for it to be completely tuned however we can definitely believe there is a bright future for it,” Jan concludes enthusiastically.

Jan van der Spek

Ajuin

Julianastraat 114

2751 GA Moerkapelle

T: +31 (0)79 593 3338

[email protected]

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Source: The Plantations International Agroforestry Group of Companies