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While Russia’s crude oil export to India has declined in the past few weeks owing to US actions, there’s one kind of oil that is not likely to see a bad day in the market. Russian sunflower oil has trumped Ukraine’s supplies to India by twelve times in the last four years.
Since the war between Russia and Ukraine broke out in 2022, Kyiv’s sunflower oil exports have been largely diverted to Europe, therefore giving Russia a chance to tap into India’s large market. Industry insiders told The Economic Times that Russia’s easier and assured access to seaports made it a more likely seller for India’s sunflower oil needs.
Sunflower oil is the most consumed oil in India, with only 5 per cent of it sourced locally. Sanjeev Asthana, CEO of Patanjali Foods and president of industry body Solvent Extractors’ Association of India (SEA), told ET, “Russia is the largest and most reliable source of sunflower oil in the world. We get advantage of supply chain reliability.”
Russia’s share of India’s total sunflower oil imports has surged from around 10 per cent in 2021 to 56 per cent in 2024. During 2024, India imported 2.09 million tonnes of sunflower oil from Russia, a twelvefold increase from roughly 175,000 tonnes in 2021.
What drove up imports?
Ukraine was India’s largest sunflower oil exporter before the war began in 2022. Post that, however, the country had to reroute much of its exports to Europe via road and rail as Moscow blocked key access to seaports in the Black Sea. This shot up transport costs for India significantly.
This is when Russia entered the scene. Sandip Bajoria, president of the International Association of Sunflower Oil, told the outlet, “They were offering us competitive rates, which is the requirement of the Indian market.”
India relies on imports to meet nearly 60 per cent of its cooking oil needs. Palm oil makes up about half of the country’s total consumption, followed by soybean and sunflower oils. Domestic sunflower cultivation declined in the 1990s, as farmers shifted away from the crop when cheaper imported oils eroded profitability. In recent years, however, sunflower oil imports have surged after prices fell below those of palm oil for the first time in 2023 and 2024, according to industry officials.