Russia steps up sunflower oil exports to China as war disrupts India trade

Russia is projecting a doubling of sunflower oil exports to China during the marketing year, according to Kyrylo Tyshkevych, head of trading at Sodrugestvo Group, one of Russia's top three producers. This surge in exports is driven by the challenges faced in shipping oil from Russia's Black Sea ports due to infrastructure bottlenecks, as conflicts in the region have disrupted loading operations at ports originally used for transporting grains and vegetable oils.

Tyshkevych revealed that Russian exporters are courting Chinese buyers by offering sunflower oil at a discount via land routes, with purchases expected to increase to 1 million metric tons in the new marketing year, beginning September 1. This is a significant rise from the 1.1 million tons expected to be shipped to India this year, down from 1.5 million tons last year due to declining demand.

Russia is on track to produce 20 million tons of sunflower seeds this year, up from 17.5 million tons in the previous year, but weak export demand is expected to restrain crushing operations, leaving 3 million tons of seeds in carryover stocks at the start of the next marketing year. Similar issues have plagued Ukraine, the world's second-largest sunflower oil supplier, as it too is struggling to export sunflower oil to India, resulting in a reduction of sunflower seed crushing.