Exports of vegetable oils in January-September 2023 reached almost 5 million tons

This is 44% higher than last year.

Over the first 9 months of 2023, Russia supplied almost 5 million tons of vegetable oil to foreign markets, which is 44% higher than the same period in 2022. Interfax writes about this with reference to Kirill Lozovoy, an analyst at the OleoScope agency.

In the structure of vegetable oil exports, more than 60% is sunflower oil. Its shipments abroad increased by 36%, amounting to 3.1 million tons. The leaders in procurement in January-September 2023 were China and India. Thus, supplies of sunflower oil to China increased 6.7 times - up to 680 thousand tons, and 2.3 times to India - up to 630 thousand tons. However, then exports to these countries decreased, as high reserves of palm, rapeseed and soybean oils were formed.

“It is expected that demand from key importers will become more active starting in November, when their domestic oil reserves will be reduced,” Lozovoy said.

Turkey occupies third place in the ranking of the largest buyers of Russian sunflower oil, despite the fact that the country reduced purchases by 25%, to 495 thousand tons. In fourth place is Iran with an indicator of 290 thousand tons. However, according to Lozovoy, the Iranian government, due to high domestic reserves, plans to introduce a ban on the import of soybean and sunflower oil from October 23 (the information has not yet been officially confirmed).

Egypt closes the top 5 buyers of sunflower oil from Russia. In January-September 2023, the country increased purchases by 1.8 times, to 250 thousand tons. According to Lozovoy, Egypt can continue to increase imports of sunflower oil from Russia.

   Soybean and rapeseed oil

Since the beginning of 2023, exports of soybean and rapeseed oils have increased 1.6 times, exceeding 1.7 million tons. At the conference “Agroinvestor: PRO crop production,” Lozovoy noted that the introduction of exchange rate export duties will be noticeable in this segment.

“It seems to me that the situation will be very difficult for producers of soybean and rapeseed oil, because the margins of the companies that produce these products are quite low, and a duty of 7%, which exists at the current exchange rate of the ruble, may have a negative impact on their economy.” , - he said.

The executive director of the Oil and Fat Union, Mikhail Maltsev, told the magazine field.rf that in the current season, the export of soybean oil may increase by 13%, and the export of meal may decrease slightly due to the introduction of an exchange rate duty.

As OleoScope analyst Kirill Lozovoy noted, the key importers of Russian soybean oil in January-September of this year were Algeria and India with a total purchase rate of 140 thousand tons. Rapeseed oil was mainly sent to China - 1.1 million tons, which is 6.7 times higher than in 2022.