Supermarkets starts rationing as sunflower oil shortage deepens amid Ukraine war

Various supermarkets in the country have started to ration the amount of cooking oil customers can buy as the sunflower oil shortage deepens due to the war in Ukraine.

Signs have been put on shelves in Waitrose and Morrisons, limiting customers to just two bottles across all cooking oils shops and online from Friday (8) as supermarkets scramble for alternatives.

“We want to ensure customers continue to have a choice of cooking oil so we are asking them to buy no more than two units each,” reports quoted the statement by Waitrose.

Restrictions are also in place for online shopping.

The same restrictions are put in place by Morrisons while Sainsbury’s has put up signs asking shoppers to replace sunflower oil with others, especially rapeseed oil.

Similar messages cropped up on stores’ websites while some were reportedly not letting shoppers buy more than the stipulated amount, flashing messages like “Maximum quantity exceeded”.

Co-op has also said that it is working with suppliers to find alternatives such as rapeseed oil, the Telegraph reported.

The reports come as the UK’s biggest cooking oil bottler, Edible Oils, last week warned that Britain had only a few weeks’ supply of sunflower oil left.

“At the moment, Ukrainian farmers should be sowing the seeds now for the harvest in October and November,” Kim Matthews, commercial director at Edible Oils, told the BBC last week.

“Clearly that’s not going to happen…. we’re probably going to miss the season so we could be impacted for 12-18 months.”

He said it is unclear as to when supply will return to normal, pre-war levels. 

It comes as the war in Ukraine has sparked a huge global shortage in sunflower oil. Ukraine is the main supplier of sunflower oil in the UK. Shortages in sunflower oil lead to increased demand for substitutes such as rapeseed oil, therefore creating shortages in all cooking oil products and driving the prices higher.

Apart from cooking, sunflower oil is also used as an ingredient in crisps, mayonnaise, bread, and biscuits.

Meanwhile, PepsiCo, the manufacturer of Walkers, reported to have confirmed that it is “temporarily” switching from sunflower to rapeseed oil in the production of its crisps – insisting customers will not be able to taste any difference.