Sunflower oil prices increasing

News of a possible Russian ban on sunflower exports sent the European sunflower oil market $50 per MT higher last week.

Regardless of what the Russians do it is most likely that they will not be the world’s sunflower price leader as they have been for the past two years. This opens the door for more export opportunities for U.S. sunoil sales.

Recently USDA announced U.S. sunoil sales to India and several Mideast locations. U.S. soybean oil sales have been brisk in the last two weeks as well. Sales of 150,000 MT were reported by USDA with most of the volume going to China. This is an unusual situation with the U.S. being world competitive. More South American oil is going into biodiesel production and domestic use.

Closer to home sunflower seed prices have been increasing over the last several weeks. That is likely a combination of world dynamics mentioned above and that the U.S. sunflower crop is under some stress due to the heavy rains in the northern region.