EU sunflower seed imports reach record high

The EU-27’s sunflower seed imports for the 2022-23 marketing year (July-June) have already surpassed all annual import volumes since 2003-04, as the bloc has stepped up its crush activity amid firm domestic vegetable oil prices, and partially replaced its poor harvest of crop. The EU’s combined receipts of sunflower seeds on 1 July-4 December reached 1.32mn t, up sharply from the 197,000t imported by the same time a year earlier, according to provisional European Commission data. This means that import volumes so far this season are above the bloc’s total annual receipts for all years on record apart from the 2002-03 and 2003-04 marketing years. The EU’s imports so far this year also set a new high for the July-December period. Receipts have been boosted by Ukraine, which has supplied 1.15mn t so far this season, making up 87.1pc of overall imports. This was sharply up from the 10,300t supplied from the origin over the same period a year earlier. Meanwhile, imports from the EU’s ...