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INTERVIEW-Producers see rise in Ukraine vegoil output, sales
By Pavel Polityuk KIEV, Nov 14 (Reuters) — Record high world prices and strong demand will prompt Ukraine to raise vegetable oil output and exports, but it also has to limit rapeseed sales to boost local biofuel production, producers said on Wednesday. The head of Ukraine's vegetable oil producers' union UkrOliyaProm Stepan Kapshuk told Reuters in an interview the sunflower sown area over the next few years would be no lower than 4 million hectares. The rapeseed area could double. «High prices will cause an increase in the sown area to at least 4 million hectares. The most important thing now is to increase the sunseed yield to at least 1.5 tonnes per hectare,» Kapshuk said. «With such yields, the sown area sunseed crop would total 6 million tonnes.» Ukraine harvested 4.2 million tonnes of sunseed with a yield of about 1.2-1.3 tonnes per hectare in 2007. In 2006, the sunseed harvested reached a record 5.3 million and sunoil production stood at 2.3 million tonnes. Kapshuk said sunoil output was likely to total 1.8 million tonnes in the 2007/08 season with about 1.3 million exported. He added that a vegetable oil export surplus could be achieved only thanks to higher sunoil sales. This would, however, not apply to rapeseed oil, which Ukraine, short of crude, hopes to use for biofuel production. «Ukraine's local market could consume no more than 500,000 tonnes of sunoil and all the rest should be exported,» he said. REPESEED Ukraine boosted rapeseed output to 1.2 million tonnes in 2007 from 654,000 in 2006 and an average crop of 380,000 tonnes in 2001-2006. Farms are likely to increase the harvest to about 2 million in 2008. Ukraine, with a crushing capacity of more than 6 million tonnes of oilseed per season, exports about 90 percent of its rapeseed crop but Kapshuk said restrictions were needed to encourage domestic biofuel production. «Our main task is to transform rapeseed into a source of alternative fuel. I don't want to stop exports, but at least half of them should be directed to the domestic market,» he said. «In three to five years we will face world oil and gas prices and that will stimulate production.» In the first four months of the 2007/08 season, Ukraine accelerated rapeseed exports to 733,053 tonnes compared with a total of 486,582 tonnes in the whole of 2006/07. Last month, leading UkrAgroConsult consultancy said rapeseed exports were likely to jump to a record 1.065 million tonnes in the 2007/08 season after an increase in the 2007 harvest. Exports totalled 490,000 tonnes in 2006/07, 188,000 in 2005/06 and 80,000 tonnes in 2004/05. The consultancy has forecast the 2008 rapeseed crop could double to 2.35 million tonnes and about 90 percent of the harvest might be exported.
Date: 14.11.2007 Leave your comment
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