The shortage can already be felt on the shelves of European supermarkets. Not only the food industry, but also the cosmetics industry is getting into trouble due to the lack of sunflower oil. Ukraine and Russia are the world’s largest exporters of the product.
The images are repeated from Paris to Barcelona: empty shelves, some with sunflower oil or other derivatives thereof such as margarine, chips and sauces. In establishments that still have a few rare bottles of this hitherto common product, prices rose unexpectedly.
The demand for sunflower oil is so great that some supermarket chains have even imposed quotas on customers. In Madrid, the Mercadona and Corte Inglés establishments allow each customer to consume just five liters of the product per day.
In France, the government has allowed food companies that rely on sunflower oil to manufacture derivatives to substitute it with another similar product without changing the packaging for a maximum period of six months. French food manufacturers are already using rapeseed or palm oil in biscuits, chips, margarine, spreads, preserves and sauces.
“There are thousands of products,” explains Camille Dorioz of the NGO Foodwatch in an interview with Franceinfo. “Some industrialists say there is no more sunflower oil on the market and they need to replace it in their products. We are not complaining about this change, but we demand clear information,” he repeats.
Picture: UOL Art.No
Britain has been suffering from a shortage of sunflower oil for weeks. The country even fears that with the product’s disappearance from the shelves, a traditional British dish, fish and chips, will no longer be served in restaurants and at the public’s table.
The largest sunflower oil producers are at war
Ukraine, which provides 50% of the world trade in sunflower oil, has been unable to export it since the Russian invasion. The country’s ports are blocked, and according to Kyiv, the roads and railways that allowed half a million tons of the product to flow west are ten times less than before the war began.
Russia, which exports 28% of the sunflower oil it produces, has set a quota for international sales of its “liquid gold”. In early April, Moscow increased export taxes by 20%.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, food prices reached “unprecedented levels” last March. The institution points out that the main culprits are vegetable oils, whose levels recorded a peak of 23.2%.
The famous European cosmetics industry is also suffering from the consequences of the war in Ukraine. Manufacturers face shortages of paper, glass, alcohol and sunflower oil. The rise in packaging, energy and raw material prices has increased the cost of producing these items by 25 to 30 percent, says Federica Levato of consulting firm Bains & Company.
“We are in crisis management mode regarding scarce products,” says Emmanuel Guichard, General Delegate of the Federation of Beauty Companies of France. The same observation was made by the directors of Intercos, an Italian cosmetics retailer that is preparing to announce price increases for several items in a few weeks.
Strong price increase for other vegetable oils
As part of the food industry substituted sunflower oil, values of other oilseeds derived from canola, soy and palm also took an unexpected leap. For example, soybean oil was up 16.5% in the US market earlier this month, and rapeseed oil hit its alltime high last week (€1,000 per tonne, with deliveries to the European market not scheduled until May).
With forecasts of the end of the war becoming more and more distant, farmers in France, the European Union’s first oilseed producer, want to plant more rapeseed this year. The area of this crop should increase by 18.4% this year compared to 2021, while the area devoted to wheat should decrease by 3.9%.
In the United States, where sowing takes place between May and June, several growers are already planning to increase their acreage. The National Association of Sunflower Growers is forecasting a 20 to 25% increase in planting, “something unprecedented,” says organization president John Sandbakken.
(With information from AFP and Reuters)