The outage in Ukraine, quotas introduced in Russia and consumer fears have clouded the prices of edible oils such as sunflower and rapeseed in a global market where cereals are also on the rise.

Ukraine, which secured 50% of the world's trade in sunflower oil, can no longer export due to the war. According to Kiev, its ports are blocked and roads and trains allow to take to the west less than half a million tons of goods per month, mostly cereals, which is ten times less than before the conflict.

Russia, which exports 28% of the world's sunflower oil, has just introduced a quota to regulate exports, after increasing 20% of taxes for overseas sales in early April.

The threat of shortages and high oil prices have boosted the contributions of all oilseeds that are used to produce oil (rapeseed, sunflower, peanuts, soybeans and palm) and which are also used as food for livestock and as vegetable fuels.

As a result, soybean oil has risen 16.5% since the beginning of April in the American market and canola (modified rapeseed from Canada) reached, on Monday (18), its historical high and since Friday (16) is above 1,000 euros per tonne for deliveries in May to European markets.

In supermarket gondolas in several countries, sunflower oil is scarce and consumers rush to take the remaining bottles on the shelves, despite the price approaching that of olive oil. In Madrid, some supermarkets have set limits of five liters per customer.

In March, food prices reached the "highest level ever recorded," driven by vegetable oils rising 23.2 percent, according to the Un Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) April report.

"Demand continues and the crisis persists," a combination that "will keep prices very high," said Damien Vercambre, a broker at the firm Inter-Courtage.

The war exploded in a context of tension in the oil market, after a difficult year in 2021 and in the face of the expectation of a bad soybean harvest in South America.

Source: ISTOÉ Dinheiro