Ukraine is likely to raise sunflower oil and rapeseed exports sharply in 2006/07 on a higher oilseed crop and strong foreign demand from biofuel producers, a leading analyst group said on Tuesday.
UkrAgroConsult said Ukraine was likely to export a record 1.62 million tonnes of sunoil and 1.09 million tonnes of oilseed, including 490,000 tonnes of rapeseed, in 2006/07. "High sunoil export demand and strong interest from western biofuel producers in the Ukrainian raw material, rapeseed, are the key reason for the higher export forecast," UkrAgroConsult director Serhiy Feofilov told Reuters.
Last season Ukraine exported 1.52 million tonnes of sunoil and 795,000 tonnes of oilseed, including 188,000 tonnes of rapeseed. UkrAgroConsult raised its forecast for the 2006 sunseed harvest to 5.15 million tonnes from 5.0 million previously. It said 2006/07 sunoil output would be 2.1 million tonnes compared with 2005/06 output and a previous forecast of 2.0 million.
"The higher estimates for the 2006 sunseed crop, its good quality (oil content of 44-45 percent) and greater sunoil production caused us to increase our sunoil export estimate," UkrAgroConsult said. The consultancy noted Ukraine was likely to export sunoil mostly to the European Union, the Middle East and North Africa.
BIOFUf renewable alternatives. UkrAgroConsult said the world-wide trend to increase fuel output from agricultural products would encourage Ukrainian producers to increase the area sown to oilseeds.
"The rapid expansion of biofuel markets in Europe and America leads to increasing demand for biofuels and raw materials on world markets," the consultancy said. "In future, food and energy prices will be linked with drastic changes to international production and trade," it said. Feofilov said Ukraine was likely to increase the area sown to the 2007 rapeseed crop by about 53 percent to 850,000 hectares from 556,000 hectares in 2006.
But he said Ukraine was likely to remain an exporter of oilseeds in the near future due to the high profitablity of such shipments and a lack of funds in the country to build its own biofuel facilities.
Comments
Comments are closed.