Turkey’s Sunflower Oil Exports An average of 1 million tons of vegetable oil is consumed annually in Turkey. Sunflower oil makes up 85 percent of this oil. In addition, an average of 350-400 thousand tons of oil is exported annually.
The sunflower production needed for both domestic consumption and export is 3 million tons. However, Turkey produces about 1 million tons of sunflower, only one-third of it. Since the production is insufficient, most of the need is imported as seed or crude oil.
All governments that have been in office for many years have aimed to increase oilseed production. Increasing oilseed production is definitely expressed in development plans. However, the policies implemented increase imports like an avalanche, not production.
In summary, the import table of sunflower is as follows:
Government officials and ministers always refer to 2002 when describing their achievements. Based on the data of the Vegetable Oil Manufacturers Association, we focused on the import figures of sunflower since 2002.
While 42 million dollars was paid for 129 thousand tons of sunflower imports in 2002, 52 million dollars was paid for 93 thousand tons of crude sunflower oil imports in the same year. A very stable growth has been recorded in the following years. The record is broken in 2011 and 2012.
Sunflower seeds, namely seeds, reached a record level of 905 thousand tons in 2011. The foreign exchange paid for this import is 589 million dollars. The record in crude oil imports belongs to 2012, a year later. While Turkey imported 742 thousand tons of crude sunflower oil last year, approximately 1 billion dollars (987 million) foreign currency was paid.
