The Ukraine-Russia crisis has significant implications for food supply chains. Between the two, Russia and Ukraine account for nearly a third of global wheat exports, 19% of exported corn and 80% of exports of sunflower oil, the third most traded vegetable oil internationally.
Sunflower oil is mostly used in the food industry, where it can be segmented into: food processing industry as ingredient (eg margarine, sauces, mayonnaise, frying, etc) and bottling industry where sunflower oil is bottled as final product for multi-purpose cooking oil. Additional use of sunflower oil can be seen in cosmetics formulations as an emollient.
As the war continues, the supply of this oil is jeopardize and the industry is challenged to come up with alternatives for this ingredient. Replacing one ingredient by another isn’t done that easily and many aspects such as nutritional quality, food safety (exposure to contaminants), regulatory,… has to be taken into account. The ramifications of this crisis unfortunately goes way beyond: food security, food fraud, …
This digital roundtable aims to discuss potential short-term solutions to address the critical supply; as well as long term actions to improve the resilience of our food system.
Register here.
