While the market situation for sunflower oil at the beginning of the war launched by Russia in Ukraine was rather tense, triggered by panic buying across the whole chain up to the final consumer, the situation has over the last weeks improved.

Reformulation, redirection of vegetable oil volumes have reduced pressure on sunflower oil demand. Additional flows of sunflower seeds, that are being further processed in the EU, and of sunflower oil are coming out of Ukraine mostly by rail and by truck. These volumes will not reach the volumes that were shipped before the beginning of the war by sea vessel, but they are improving the market situation and help vegetable oil refiners responding to sunflower oil demand in the EU. With the current increased availability of sunflower oil, prices have dropped compared to rapeseed oil and the switches into rapeseed oil have stopped.

The continuity of supply streams may pose problems locally, but in fact bottled sunflower oil is readily available in the EU and shortages on some supermarket shelves are not due to lack of sunflower oil availability.