A slight drop in production volume has failed to dampen the outlook for leading Australian onion grower-exporter Field Fresh Tasmania this season.
The company’s general manager of sales, Kim Brown, expects both its brown and red offerings to be in high demand.
“We hope to run a strong export programme into Europe, while there is also increased interest coming out of Japan,” Brown explains.
“The crop out of Hokkaido is down significantly due to storms and poor growing conditions, so there is a strong demand at both wholesale and consumer levels in Japan, particularly for larger bulb sizes and red onions.Typhoons have also damaged crops in Taiwan and Mexico, so hopefully there will be strong overall demand overseas.”
Field Fresh commenced exporting brown onions in late January, while the first consignments of red onions will be shipped around mid February.Despite a wet and cold start to summer in Tasmania, Brown says the quality of this season’s crop appears exceptional.
“The weather has improved a lot since December and the forecast is for a mostly dry and warm run until the end of our season in April,” Brown says.
“At this stage we are forecasting the crop to be 10 per cent down on last season but we also expect a consistently high-quality crop, which means our customers can expect a reliable supply of class one product.”
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