Over the past three seasons, the production of oilseeds has grown and in 2018/119 MY it reached 18.7 million tons. At the same time, the share of sunflower seeds in the total production is 70% and in 2018/19 MY it was 12.7 million tons. This was reported by Anton Gritsai, commercial director for vegetable oils and meal products of EFKO company (according to AgroVestnik), during his speech at the third international conference of the International Sunflower Seed and Oil Conference 2019.
"So, against the background of the growth of oilseed production, Russia increases the production of sunflower oil, as a result, Russia's share in world oil production in 2018/19 MY was 24%, thus the country is the second largest producer of the product after Ukraine. Also, over the past three seasons, Russia has increased the export of sunflower oil from 1.7 million tons in 2016/17 MG to 2 million tons in 2017/18 MG and at the end of 2.2 million tons in 2018/19 MG", A. Gritsai noted.
The top 3 importers of sunflower oil from Russia are Iran, Turkey and Egypt. "If we talk about the export of Russian oil to the Indian market, then its share compared to the supply of Ukrainian oil is much lower. It is believed that the reason for this is the insufficient quality of Russian sunflower oil. However, Russia not only increases the production of the product, but also improves its quality, which in the future may contribute to an increase in shipments of sunflower oil from the Russian Federation to India. At the moment, EFKO is ready to supply Indian importers of non-GMOs with raw sunflower oil, soybean and rapeseed oil, as well as non-GMO sunflower and rapeseed meal," the expert concluded.
