Root crops are the least glamorous thing a mid-size buyer loads from Egypt and the easiest to get right. They are slow to deteriorate, tolerant of a wide arrival window, cheap per kilo on freight relative to their value, and forgiving if a sailing rolls. For a buyer building a first part-load or filling space around a more fragile product, they are the sensible ballast.
The window
Sweet potato runs from October through March, with the best quality in the first months after harvest and curing. Beetroot and carrot are available across the winter into spring. Onion has two windows, with the main export season from February and a storage crop moving through autumn. This makes the root category the one thing available almost continuously between October and May, which is useful when the fruit calendar has gaps.
Sweet potato
Beauregard is the volume export variety, orange-fleshed with a copper skin, and is what most European and Gulf buyers mean when they order Egyptian sweet potato. Bellevue and other orange-flesh types appear. White and purple-flesh varieties exist in smaller quantities and need to be specified explicitly.
Size is specified by weight band. The common export bands are 100 to 200 g, 200 to 400 g and 400 to 800 g, with the middle band the easiest to sell into retail and the largest band moving to foodservice and processing. Class I requires the root to be firm, whole, clean, free of sprouting, free of soft rot and free of deep growth cracks. Some skin scuffing is normal on a freshly harvested root and is not a defect if it has healed.
Curing is the step that decides how the crop arrives. Properly cured sweet potato has been held warm and humid for several days after lifting so that skin damage heals over, and it will hold for months. Uncured roots rot. Ask the supplier to confirm the curing regime, not just that curing happened.
Beetroot, carrot and onion
Beetroot exports as a topped root, generally 40 to 90 mm diameter for retail, in 10 kg or 20 kg cartons or in mesh bags. Carrot sizes by diameter and length and moves in 10 kg cartons or bags. Onion moves in 10 kg, 20 kg or 25 kg mesh bags, with red and yellow both available and the grade specified by diameter band.
Onion and garlic have their own handling requirements distinct from the wet root crops. Our guide to Egyptian onion and garlic part-loads covers those separately.
Set points, and the one thing to get right
This is where root crops differ from each other and where a mixed load goes wrong. Sweet potato must not be shipped cold. It is chilling sensitive and suffers internal damage below roughly 12 to 13 degrees Celsius, showing up as hard core and off flavour after cooking. The correct transit set point is around 13 to 14 degrees with good ventilation.
Beetroot and carrot want the opposite, close to 0 to 1 degrees Celsius and high humidity. Onion wants cool and dry, with good air movement and low humidity.
The practical consequence is that sweet potato cannot share a reefer with beetroot or carrot at a single set point. It co-loads happily with mango, ginger and other warm-set products. Beetroot and carrot co-load with citrus and pomegranate. Onion sits awkwardly with anything that needs humidity. Getting this wrong is the most common failure on a mixed root load, and it is entirely avoidable at the booking stage. See reefer set point conflicts in mixed containers.
Quantities and pallet arithmetic
A pallet of 10 kg cartons of sweet potato carries roughly 800 to 1,000 kg net depending on stacking. Half pallets are readily quotable on all four crops because the products are robust enough to survive being broken down at a consolidation point.
Root crops carry a lot of weight per pallet, so watch the container payload rather than the volume. A load built mostly from roots will hit the weight limit before it fills the box.
Documents
Phytosanitary certificate, certificate of origin, invoice, packing list, bill of lading. Root crops carrying soil attract more attention at plant health inspection than fruit does, so washing and grading standards matter for clearance and not only for appearance. EU entry needs CHED-PP pre-notification. Preferential origin documentation can reduce the duty payable, as covered in our note on duty and preferential origin on an Egyptian part-load.
Booking
Sweet potato bookings for the October opening are being taken now. Four weeks ahead is comfortable for the rest of the window. Peivana quotes mixed part-loads the same day and is GLOBALG.A.P. and BRC certified.
To request grades, formats and a quotation on Egyptian sweet potato or root vegetables in part-load quantities, message the Peivana desk on WhatsApp at +20 10 9911 1918.