Onion export season by country

Roughly February to July, into the gap between European harvests. Like the potatoes, this is a storage crop sold on timing.

Onions cure before they ship and then keep for months, which makes them one of the very few programmes where a delay is a price problem and not a quality one. That is also why nobody watches these containers, and why they are disproportionately the ones sitting at a terminal accruing charges.

Roughly April to July, into the gap between the Northern Hemisphere’s stored crop running out and its new one being lifted. The volume goes to Southeast Asia, Japan and Korea on short lanes.

Onions are a storage crop sold on timing, so the exposure is the same as Egypt’s: a shipment three weeks late lands into a market somebody else has already supplied. The difference is that China can ship again the following week, which makes this the row where a missed arrival is a margin problem rather than a lost season.

Effectively year-round on three harvests. The rabi crop lifted from March cures and carries exports through the middle of the year; the kharif crop from October covers the rest, which is why the shoulder band below is every remaining month.

The exposure on this row is not agricultural. India has repeatedly restricted, taxed or banned onion exports at short notice when the domestic price rises, and a programme can stop being legal between the booking and the loading. No other window in this section carries that risk, and it belongs in a contract clause rather than in a plan.