August 28 2007, 13:46

Officially: bulb onion export in Ukraine to grow almost 2 thousand times in the season 2006/07

The official data on the export of bulb onion from Ukraine in July 2006 - June 2007 confirm the tentative forecasts done by the analysts of "Agrooglyad: Vegetables and Fruits" weekly. During this period 66,500 tons of onion were supplied from Ukraine; one season ago this volume amounted to just 35 tons.

Due to the record high production, relatively low prices and rich supply of high-quality onion Ukraine was able to build up the export shipments of this product, although our country was earlier considered to be a net importer of onion. According to the data of the official statistics, Ukrainian farmers harvested 869,000 tons of bulb onion in 2006. So, the share of export constituted 7.7% in the total production structure.

We should take into consideration two facts: the most part of onion grown in the country will never enter markets; and, the considerable part of the grown onion is spoiled during the storage period; so we think that the export supplies constituted not less than 20% of onion which entered the market. Moreover, some market players think, not all exported onion was reflected in the official exporting statistics. Moreover, predominantly high quality products were exported.

The geography of onion export was rather extended; though in the beginning of season onion was mostly exported to Poland. According to the season results, around 20 countries purchased Ukrainian onion; the wholesale companies, processors and supermarkets from Russia purchased the largest shipments - around 53% of the total number of onion. Almost 16,000 tons of onion were exported to Poland; its share amounted to around 24% of the total export supplies of onion from Ukraine. The third largest importer of Ukrainian onion was Romania, which received the cheapest onion supplied by our country. Belarus was also a large buyer of Ukrainian onion; it imported more than 3,000 tons of this product.

More than 1,000 tons of Ukrainian onion was purchased by Bulgaria, Estonia and Lithuania. The large buyers were Latvia, Moldova, Germany, and Greece. The wholesale shipments of onion were shipped from Ukraine to Slovenia, Georgia, Netherlands, Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro and Azerbaijan.

You can learn about the perspectives of onion export and prices in the new season from the presentations of the leading experts of this industry during the fourth international conference "Fruits and Vegetables of Ukraine 2007. Meeting New Leader", to be held on December 4th-6th 2007 on the territory of the National Complex "Expocenter of Ukraine" in Kyiv. The online registration form for the conference participants is available here.

Also, we'd like to point out that you can learn about the perspectives of onion export to Russian Federation (the world largest importer of bulb onion) from the reports made during the second international conference "Fruits&Vegetable Business of Russia 2007" to be held October 23rd-25th 2007 on the territory of "Expocenter" in Moscow. If registered and paid for participation until September 10th, the company may save 1,750 RUR per each representative.