Due to the conflict in Ukraine, sunflower oil has become a national crisis as there has been a shortage of sunflower oil in UK supermarkets.

 

80% exports of sunflower oil mainly comes from Ukraine as they produce almost half of the world’s sunflower oil globally. Despite the conflict, the number of exports has rose down by almost 40%.

 

UK supermarkets has limited the amount of sunflower oils for customers to buy and they are trying to encourage to use an alternative substitute for sunflower oil, such as using rapeseed oil, vegetable oil or olive oil. 

 

Andrea Martinez-Inchausti, who is the Deputy Director of Food at the British Retail Consortium said: “The war in Ukraine has disrupted supplies of sunflower oil to the UK. Where sunflower oil exists as an ingredient in products, retailers will be substituting it with other safe oils, such as rapeseed oil.”

 

This means that supermarket products will now change their ingredients, where sunflower oil is the key ingredient such as in crisps, and they will change this ingredient to a new substitute oil.

 

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) are working within food industries to ensure the food supply is maintained in a way that is ‘safe’ and ‘in the interests of consumers.’