Onion growers and industry leaders are concerned about the level of competition, as well as mislabelling of foreign onions on the supermarket shelves. “The biggest threat to the supply is from now until October, as cold stores supplies start to dwindle,” says Onions Australia CEO Lechelle Earl. “We’re talking to retailers to make sure they aren’t importing US onions. Coles and Woolworths have already guaranteed Australian grown onions for their customers.”
Growers have to compete with imported onions, the ongoing battle for market share between the few dominant supermarket chains and increased competition between wholesalers, which all affect farm-gate prices, according to Qualipac Sales and Marketing Manager, and Chair of Onions Australia Kees Versteeg.
When asked what volumes of onions Australia produces and what the domestic and/or international uptake is of Australian onion “It is very difficult to provide accurate numbers," Mr Versteeg said. "Australian growers are keeping a lot of information close to their chest and the domestic and international supply chain does not like to share such detailed information."
According to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures (year ending 30 June 2014), Australia produced 256,044MT onions over 2013 - 2014. "As for Qualipac that normally produces 4,000-6,000MT each season, we continually tend to adjust our production each year based on expected farm-gate prices," added Mr Versteeg. "Over the past 2-3 years I have seen production being downsized simply because onions for quite some time have not been a profitable exercise for our growers at Qualipac."
For the first time this year there was a new ‘sweet pink’ variety of onion available in 1 kilo packs at Coles, a sign that growers were listening to consumers. “When business is stagnating at the customer level, you’ve got to come up with something different,” says Mr Versteeg. “I’ve always wanted to see more varieties grown here in Australia, so I was impressed with the efforts by Riva Pak in that regard.”
