Sunflower oil producers were mostly concerned with finding cheap raw materials, increasing oilseed crushing capacities, logistics issues, as well as competition in export volumes of sunflower oil.

Meanwhile, rapid growth in demand for raw materials has led to margin redistribution from sun oil producers to producers of sunflower seeds. Thus, in the first half of 2012/2013 season sun oil producers’ margin dropped to a critical level, and in some cases even became negative.

In these circumstances, oil extraction enterprises had to seek ways to improve profitability of veg oils production. Experts of UkrAgroConsult believe that in terms of saturation and limited domestic market of bottled oils, promising direction is to produce phosphatide concentrate and lecithin (type of emulsifiers).

Currently, emulsifiers, which are widely used in various sectors of food industry (confectionery, margarine, milk, etc.), are imported due to the lack of production in Ukraine. Phosphatide concentrate - a raw material for lecithin – is a by-product obtained during oil processing and its production in Ukraine is insignificant.

If investments in this new sector of emulsifier market increase, lecithin imports can be completely replaced by its domestic production.

The issue of investment in infrastructure and processing of vegetable oils will be the theme of one of the sessions at the International Conference “BLACK SEA OIL TRADE-2013: New Markets. New Strategies”, which is held by consulting agency “UkrAgroConsult” on September 18, 2013.

UkrAgroConsult