EU sunflower seed imports reach record high

The EU-27's sunflower seed imports for the 2022-23 marketing year (July-June) have already surpassed all annual import volumes since 2003-04, as the bloc has stepped up its crush activity amid firm domestic vegetable oil prices, and partially replaced its poor harvest of crop.

The EU's combined receipts of sunflower seeds on 1 July-4 December reached 1.32mn t, up sharply from the 197,000t imported by the same time a year earlier, according to provisional European Commission data. This means that import volumes so far this season are above the bloc's total annual receipts for all years on record apart from the 2002-03 and 2003-04 marketing years. The EU's imports so far this year also set a new high for the July-December period.

Receipts have been boosted by Ukraine, which has supplied 1.15mn t so far this season, making up 87.1pc of overall imports. This was sharply up from the 10,300t supplied from the origin over the same period a year earlier.

Meanwhile, imports from the EU's other suppliers — Moldova, Serbia and China — were broadly unchanged on the year in absolute terms.

The bulk of Ukrainian supply was received by Bulgaria and Romania, which have used imported crops to make up for year-on-year losses in their domestic sunflower seed output, as well as to redirect to third countries.

And strong sunflower oil (SFO) prices in the EU have prompted European crushers to import sunflower seeds and process the product domestically rather than importing sunflower meal or SFO. This was further evidenced by a slower uptick in the bloc's imports of meal and SFO, which are both up on the year but broadly in line with 2020-21 levels.

European sunflower seed crushing jumped by just under 30pc on the month in October, to 415,000t, according to latest available data from oilseed association Fediol.

On the Ukrainian front, exports of seed could become increasingly more viable than those of meal or SFO, as the nation's weakened energy supply has pressured its crushing, processing and refining capacity in recent weeks.

The US Department of Agriculture most recently pegged the EU's 2022-23 sunflower seed imports at 2.35mn t, up from the 1.85mn t that it estimated for the past year and an all-time high for the bloc. This also implies that the EU could receive more than 1mn t of crop over the remainder of the season, implying an import pace of 34,000 t/week compared with 57,600 t/week so far.

By Anya Fielding