KYIV, Ukraine, September 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

In the 2011/2012 marketing year Ukraine produced 3.65 million tons of sunflower oil and exported over 90 percent of this amount (3.2 million tons), reported the head of Ukroilprom  Association Stepan Kapshuk. Exceeding its 2010/2011 rates by 20.8 percent in the current marketing year, Ukraine's share of the world's market of sunflower oil exports reached 51 percent.

Ukraine, controlling the biggest share of the global market of sunflower oil, is followed by Russia and Argentina. The top consumer of Ukrainian sunflower oil is India - the country acquires around one quarter of the annual Ukrainian sunflower oil export. In 2011 Iran became the first runner up purchasing 55.84 thousand tons of Ukrainian oil. Ukraine also exports large volumes of sunflower oil to Turkey, Egypt, the Netherlands, Russia, Italy, Spain, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, Georgia.

In order to achieve the mark Ukraine processed 8.6 million tons of sunflower oil with the year's harvest of 8.7 million tons. As of September 1, 2012, there were 38 oilseed processing plants with the total capacity of 12.5 million tons per year. Ukroilprom's expert predicted further growth of the capacities up to 13 million tons by August 2013. Notably, Ukraine's current share in the global sunflower oil production is about 25 percent.

Ukraine, however, predicted a decrease of the crop volumes by 15 percent in the following marketing year due to unfavorable weather conditions.

By the end of 2010 Ukraine reached the 57 percent share in the global sunflower oil export: the country produced 3.3 million tons of sunflower oil, having exported most of this amount. In 2011 the country was producing the same volume of sunflower oil as the whole Soviet Union.

Earlier, in 2009 Ukraine exported a little over 1 million tons of sunflower oil that constituted over a half of world's sunflower oil export - namely, 54 percent, according to Ukragroconsult.

Over a decade ago Ukraine began stimulating its sunflower oil production industry by introducing export tax for the sunflower seeds. This created notable incentives for the domestic sunflower oil producers to boost the processing inside the country instead of exporting the raw product. Since then, Ukraine has been gradually decreasing the export tax.

SOURCE Worldwide News Ukraine