Whether it’s chips, stir-fry or curry on the menu, the financial shock from the war in Ukraine is being felt keenly in the kitchen as cooking oil prices hit record highs.
The cost had already rocketed even before Vladimir Putin’s invasion, but now vegetable oil goes for £1.30 a liter at the supermarket, up 23p, or 22%, on a year ago. Sunflower oil – of which Ukraine and Russia are major producers – is up sharply too, by 17p to £1.34 a liter, according to NielsenIQ Scantrack data.
Three out of four households buy cooking oil, and in the UK they spend almost £400m a year on the stuff. Shoppers stock up every eight to 10 weeks, says NielsenIQ’s Mike Watkins, meaning there could be “shelf shock for many” when they return.
Besides being a cupboard staple, cooking oil is used throughout the food industry – from biscuits to ready meals to long-life cream – so cost rises and shortages have knock-on effects.
This week, the UK’s biggest bottler of sunflower oil warned stocks were running low with only a few weeks’ worth left, and it emerged manufacturers of products that rely on it, such as crisps and oven chips, were being forced to change their recipes and use other types of oil.
Home cooks may cope with higher prices by changing their cooking method or trading down to cheaper supermarket own-label oils. However, for restaurants and food companies that use huge quantities of cooking oil, shortages and price increases are adding to the pressure caused by other rising costs.
Yawar Khan, who owns Akash Tandoori in Wallington in south London, says last month a 20-litre drum of vegetable oil cost about £22 at the cash-and-carry, but today the price is closer to £40. Buyers have also been limited to two drums each, in a sign of concerns about shortages.
So how did the price of this kitchen essential get so high?
Ukraine and Russia account for about 60% of world production of sunflower oil, and the conflict has hit supplies hard. In UK stores sunflower oil is about a fifth of the market by value and 44% by volume, according to NielsenIQ. It is one of the “big four” vegetable oils, ranked behind palm, soya bean and rapeseed in that order (oil sold as “vegetable oil” is a blend of various seeds).
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