Sunflower prices in Ukraine continue to rise due to low sales rates, but they may be limited by increased supply from Argentina

The shortage of sunflower supplies to the plant and the resumption of work at most oil refineries led to a new wave of growth in sunflower prices in Ukraine against the backdrop of consistently high prices for sunflower oil on the world market.

Thanks to a decrease in the intensity of shelling of ports in recent weeks, some factories in the south have resumed work, even despite power outages.

Purchase prices for sunflower in Ukraine increased by 500 UAH/t in a week to 30,000-30,500 UAH/t or $610-620/t excluding VAT (for 50% oil content) with delivery to the factory, while competition for large batches has intensified among processors.

Demand prices for sunflower oil in Ukraine remain at $1,270-1,280/t delivered to ports, and demand prices for sunflower oil delivered to India are $1,390-1,400/t CIF Mumbai, so domestic processors are actively selling oil in anticipation of a price drop after the new soybean and sunflower crop from South America enters the market.

We remind you that due to the increase in prices for sunflower oil, the main importer of oils, India, in January sharply reduced imports of sunflower and soybean oil and increased purchases of palm oil, so the demand for Ukrainian sunflower oil will decrease.

In January, Ukraine exported about 393 thousand tons of sunflower oil (compared to 550 thousand tons in December), and in total, in the 5 months of the 2025/26 MY, 2.5 million tons of oil were exported out of the 4.5-5 million tons projected for the entire season.

In Argentina, as of January 28, 1.5 million tons of sunflower were harvested from 24% of the area with a yield of 2.28 tons/ha, and local analysts expect the harvest to increase to 6 - 6.5 million tons compared to 5.2 million tons in the 2024/25 MY.

According to Oil World, in the EU in October-December 2025, the volume of sunflower seed processing increased seasonally and amounted to about 2.1 million tons (+7% per year), and in total in 2025, 7.4 million tons of sunflower were processed, which was the lowest figure in the last 9 years (for comparison, in 2024 the processing volume was 9 million tons).

The main reasons for the reduction were the decrease in sunflower production in the EU, low activity of farmers in selling raw materials, as well as low margins on sunflower processing, which forced factories to switch to processing more profitable canola and rapeseed. This transition took place most actively in the Netherlands, France and Bulgaria. Also, the growth in rapeseed processing volumes in the EU was facilitated by sufficient global oilseed reserves and a relatively high share of oil production. In particular, in October-December 2025, this figure reached 6.6 million tons (+5% per year).