25 lb sacks onion prices

The 25-lb sack is the half-size wholesale pack, and it exists because not every buyer can turn a fifty-pound bag before the onions go soft. Smaller foodservice accounts, produce distributors serving independent grocers and the repack trade all take onions here. It is also the pack the red trade runs on: the red series USDA quotes most often at the storage origins are 25-lb sacks, not the 50s that anchor yellow, so this page is where a red price is most directly comparable across origins. One warning about the number above. A 25-lb sack does not cost half a 50-lb sack. Bagging, handling and freight cost close to the same per package either way, so the smaller pack carries more of that cost per pound. Divide both quotes by their weight before calling one of them cheaper.

The same care applies to volume. A USDA shipping-point price is quoted per package, so every figure on this page is dollars for one 25-lb sack, and USDA reports movement in units of 10,000 pounds, which is 400 twenty-five-pound sacks to the unit rather than the 200 a 50-lb sack gives. A day's movement that reads the same on two origin pages therefore means twice as many packages when the crop is moving in 25s. That matters most on red, which is the trade this pack largely serves.