The Benelux to West Africa onion trade

The number first, then how the lane works.

That table is the closest thing to a published price on this route, and it is worth being precise about what it is. It comes from EU trade statistics: the total customs-declared value of the onions that actually left the Netherlands and Belgium for West African destinations in the month named, divided by the tonnage that went with them. EU external-trade statistics record exports free on board at the exporting country's border, so the basis is the same one a shipper means by FOB Rotterdam or FOB Antwerp. The onions are loaded and the sea freight is still to come.

What it is not is a quote. It is a monthly average across every shipper, every grade, every size band and every contract on the lane, published two to three months after the fact. Nobody traded at that exact figure and it will not tell you what a box books at next week. It will tell you the level the trade actually cleared at, which no indication can. The export page carries the full history, the volumes behind each figure and the Belgian lane alongside the Dutch one.

Two different markets end up in the same search box. One is the US shipping-point market this site reports for the American trade, where USDA quotes onions district by district in dollars per 50-lb sack. The other is the European export trade, where Dutch and Belgian shippers sell onions FOB Antwerp, Rotterdam or Vlissingen for delivery to Dakar and the rest of West Africa, quoted in euro. The two share a word, FOB, and almost nothing else. The rest of this guide is about the second one.

Why the Benelux ships the world's onions

The Netherlands has been the largest onion exporter on the planet for years, on the strength of a crop grown on the heavy clay of Flevoland, Zeeland and Noord-Holland, lifted in late summer, then dried and held in ventilated storage. Dutch onions reach well over a hundred countries. Belgium grows far less but matters logistically, because Antwerp is one of the ports the trade loads from.

Two things make that crop suited to a long export lane. It stores, so a shipper can sell out of the shed from autumn through the following spring instead of only at harvest. And it is grown at a scale that supports full container and full vessel programs rather than pallet-sized lots.

Why West Africa

West Africa is the single largest outlet for the Dutch crop, and Senegal has long been the anchor market. Onions are a staple in the region's cooking, local production runs on a short season, and imports fill the gap between what the region grows and what it eats. Dakar is the discharge port, and from the quay the trade moves inland to markets such as Thiès and Kaolack and on into the neighboring countries.

Local growing sets the calendar. Senegal produces its own onions in the Niayes coastal zone and in the Senegal River valley, and the government has for years suspended imports for part of the year so that harvest can sell. The dates are set and announced each season and they move, so a shipper checks them rather than assuming last year's window. While the border is shut the lane is shut. When local stocks run down it reopens.

What the export figures show about that window

The chart above is the same statistic as the table, run back across several seasons. Read the volumes on the export page beside it, because on this lane the tonnage is the more telling series. When Senegal's border is closed the Netherlands-to-Senegal volume falls to a rounding error, and the value per tonne on the little that still moves stops describing a market: a few small consignments carry fixed costs that a full container program does not. When the window reopens the tonnage steps back up by two orders of magnitude inside a month. That is why the export page shows volume beside every price and leaves a month blank rather than pricing it when almost nothing shipped.

The all-destinations line on the same chart is the control. It is every non-EU market the Dutch crop goes to, and it normally sits above the West African lane. That gap is the trade's own arithmetic: West Africa buys volume in mesh bags, and the buyers paying more per tonne are elsewhere.

What FOB Antwerp actually means

FOB is free on board. An FOB Antwerp or FOB Rotterdam price covers the onions graded, bagged, trucked to the terminal and loaded, and that is where the seller's obligation stops. Ocean freight, insurance, the container, terminal charges at Dakar and any import duty belong to the buyer.

That is why searching for a route price, Antwerp to Dakar, rarely turns up one number. There are two. The FOB is the onion market, and it moves with the crop, the storage position and the euro. The freight is the shipping market, and it moves with vessel space and fuel on its own logic entirely. A quote that already includes the sea leg is not an FOB at all. It is CFR or CIF, and the gap between the two is the whole freight bill.

The same split runs through the US market this site reports, which is why the FOB guide here is worth reading even when the onions are Dutch.

The pack and the size grades

Onions on this lane commonly move in mesh bags of 25 kg, the format the West African trade handles and resells in. Smaller bags exist for buyers who ask for them.

Sizing is where a US reader gets tripped up. European onions are graded by diameter in millimetres, in bands such as 40 to 60, 50 to 70 and 60 to 80, and the band goes into the contract. USDA names its sizes instead: medium, jumbo, colossal, super colossal. The two systems do not translate cleanly, and an order placed in one and quoted in the other is an argument waiting to happen.

Colour follows the crop. The Dutch export crop is overwhelmingly yellow, and yellow is what moves in volume to West Africa. White onions are grown and shipped too, in smaller quantity, for buyers who specify them.

Containers and vessels

Most container shipments go in ventilated 40-foot boxes rather than reefers. An onion in transit needs airflow to carry moisture away, not refrigeration, and the run from the North Sea to Senegal is short enough that a vented box does the job. A 40-foot container carries on the order of 26 tonnes of bagged onions, which at 25 kg a bag is roughly a thousand bags.

That figure is also how the export price above turns into a number a buyer can hold. The table is quoted per tonne, so a container-load of onions is roughly twenty-six times the per-tonne figure, before the freight, the box and everything waiting at Dakar.

The largest programs skip containers. Volume moves as conventional breakbulk on general cargo vessels loading in Zeeland, which is why Vlissingen shows up in these searches next to the container ports. A vessel lifts thousands of tonnes at once and prices per tonne, so the two channels quote on different bases and cannot be compared line for line.

What this site tracks

Know Your Onions is built on USDA Agricultural Marketing Service data: US shipping-point FOB prices, by district, variety, size and pack. The Benelux export figures on this page are the one exception, and they come from EU trade statistics rather than from a price reporter. There is still no broker's quote here, no ocean freight rate, and no forecast of any of them.

The chart above is what this site publishes for white onions on the American side: US FOB by growing origin, straight from USDA reports. It is a separate market from the Benelux lane, on a different calendar and in different units. Read it as US market context, not as a stand-in for a Dakar landed cost.