Amid acute shortage of sunflower due to Russian invasion on Ukraine and subsequent restrictions, Unilever declared today (28) that it has altered some of its recipes to substitute rapeseed oil instead- a move that could help it save money as input costs soar.
Ukraine typically accounts for about half of the world’s exports of sunflower oil, one of the most consumed edible oils. The invasion has stalled Ukrainian shipments leading to a global shortage.
As such, food makers are moving to replace sunflower with alternatives like rapeseed or soybean oil.
Unilever, which makes Knorr bouillon cubes, Magnum ice creams and Hellmann’s mustard, counts edible oils as the “most significantly impacted commodity sector” it deals in. Sunflower oil is listed as an ingredient in some of Unilever’s products including Knorr sauces and Wall’s ice creams such as Cornetto ice cream cones.
“One of the things Unilever’s good at is flexing our formulations so that we can take advantage of differential cost increases,” Reuters quoted Unilever chief executive Alan Jope as saying.
“As supplies of sunflower oil have got really tight from the Ukraine, we’ve been able to switch to other oils like rapeseed oil quite effectively.”
Meanwhile, Unilever also announced an 8 percent price hike in the first quarter and warned more increases were on the way due to inflation and the war.
Like the food industry, the $500 billion global cosmetics sector is grappling with fallout from the war because producers use alcohol derived from grains and organic beets to make perfumes, and sunflower-seed oils to make cosmetics – all key crops from Ukraine.
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