40 lb cartons onion prices

The 40-lb carton is the rigid box of the onion trade, and it is used where a bag will not do. Sweet onions are the main case: Vidalia and the other mild varieties bruise easily, do not store long and carry a brand, so they ship in cartons that stack cleanly and protect thin skins. Peru's repacked jumbos, which arrive in the US off-season, quote here too. Buyers are retailers building displays and foodservice accounts that want a uniform, presentable onion rather than the cheapest pound available. A carton quote will usually sit above a sack quote of the same variety, and part of that gap is the box and the grading behind it, not the onion. Normalize both to a price per pound before reading one against the other.

The quoting convention and the volume math both sit between the sack packs. A USDA shipping-point price is written per package, so every figure on this page is dollars for one 40-lb carton, and USDA's 10,000-pound movement unit is 250 cartons rather than the 200 sacks a 50-lb pack gives or the 400 a 25-lb pack gives. This is also the pack to use when comparing the branded sweet crops against each other, because Georgia's Vidalia, Washington's Walla Walla and Peru's repacked jumbos all quote here, which no other pack page can say.