MUMBAI: Russia’s sunflower oil exports to China are set to double in the new marketing year, but at discounted prices, a leading Russian exporter has said, as war has damaged the country’s port infrastructure and disrupted shipments to top buyer India.
The world’s biggest producer and exporter of sunflower seeds has struggled to ship sunflower oil from its Black Sea ports because of infrastructure bottlenecks, even as demand from India remains strong, said Kyrylo Tyshkevych, head of trading at Sodrugestvo Group, one of Russia’s top three producers.
Russian and Ukrainian attacks on ports in the Black Sea region in recent weeks have disrupted loading operations at ports used to ship grains and vegetable oils.
Russian exporters are offering sunflower oil to China via land routes, at a discount, with purchases expected to double to one million tonnes in the marketing year that began Sept 1, Tyshkevych said on the sidelines of the Globoil conference in Mumbai.
Shipments to India, which go by sea, are expected to decline to 1.1 million tonnes this year, from 1.5 million tonnes a year earlier, he said. Russia’s sunflower seed production is expected to rise to 20 million tonnes this year from 17.5 million tonnes last year. — Bloomberg
