April 14, 2011
 

EU rapeseed production to commence growth again

 

 

Rapeseed output in the top grower, Europe, will resume growth next year, but not by a large margin, leaving the region facing a 20% rise in imports, mostly from Ukraine.

 

The EU, whose production of the oilseed dropped in 2010 for the first time in seven years, will see output increase by a humble 160,000 tonnes to 20.8 million tonnes this year, a report from EU attaches throughout the region said.

 

Many cultivators in countries such as Italy, Romania and Spain have converted to sunflowers or, in Poland, to winter grains after a season of poor rapeseed harvests. Plantings in Germany, the EU's leading rapeseed cultivating country, were hindered by poor early autumn weather.

 

Even part of the crop that has been planted has been reduced by winterkill, and faces the issue of dry weather.

 

"Some areas of France, Germany, Austria and Poland need rain in the coming weeks to secure good yields," the briefing said.

 

A deficit in local output will lead to significant imports in 2011-12, an increase of 20% to 2.4 million tonnes, an increase fostered by the probability of ready provisions from Ukraine, whose rapeseed crop seems to have weathered the winter in better shape than some recent seasons.

 

This increase might be enough to put the EU back in the leading position of the global rapeseed importers' league, a position it is predicted to lose to Japan this season.

 

Refineries' requirements will be supplemented by imports of rapeseed oil itself, stable at 300,000 tonnes, provisions which have in the past been supplied by Belarus, Russia and the United Arab Emirates and, more and more often, Canada.

 

However, at this time, only Austria and Germany have completely enacted the laws, leaving them reliant on atypical suppliers.

 

Germany, for example, is increasingly looking to the Czech Republic and Hungary for imports, instead of its historically major foreign suppliers, France, where farmers have been hesitant to sign forms deeming their crop sustainable, and Poland.

 

France and Poland, where authorities have not as yet worked through the relevant regulations, may need to look for export markets that do not have the sustainability requirement in place yet.