Mercadona and Eroski restrict the sale of sunflower oil due to the war

The shopping basket is not going through its best moment with the first restrictions on the acquisition of essential products. Supermarkets begin to restrict the sale of oil for avoid possible problems of shortages due to the war in Ukraine.

Mercadona has imposed a limit of five liters per customer. the food chain Velgasa-Eroski will also restrict the sale of sunflower oil starting this Saturday five bottles at Familia and Eroski supermarkets and two boxes at Cash Record.

In recent days, supermarket chains have begun to appreciate that customers begin to stockpile bottleswhich is why they have decided to limit purchases, thus preventing an effect like the one that happened with toilet paper at the beginning of the Covid pandemic from spreading.

Although the companies do not have a close business relationship with Ukraine and Russia, in the case of sunflower oil some companies import 60% of the seeds that are used for its manufacture from the conflict zone.

The impossibility of importing raw material may force look for alternatives to the standardized use of sunflower oil in products and to make use of alternatives such as rapeseed or palm oil.

Europe’s barn

The rise in inflation and the conflict in Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, where 70% of the territory is arable, and it is the world’s largest producer of sunflower oilaccording to data from 2019 compiled by the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), are causing an increase in the prices of agricultural raw materials.

Sunflower oil, specifically, rises more than 13% in the yearand the price increase since June of last year, when the lowest prices of 2021 were seen, is close to 50%. Corn, for its part, rises 28% so far this year in the US market, the largest in the world, and is already trading at less than 10% of the all-time highs reached in 2012.

Regarding wheat, the variety of durum wheat is the one that to date is experiencing the more pronounced increases, of almost 75% since last July.