Increased global demand for vegetable oils, according to the USDA, will provide an expected increase in the consumption of these products for food purposes. The growing urban populations of some of the largest countries in Asia will remain the main consumer.
This forecast comes at a time when analysts in the global oil and fats industry are predicting the first decline in global biodiesel demand in a decade. There are several reasons for this, the main ones being a reduction in government lending to the industry in the US, a decline in demand from the US market for Canadian rapeseed oil, and anti-dumping tariffs on rapeseed supplies to China.
In the European Union, biodiesel production is forecast to decline by more than 4% on the back of a high 2025 rapeseed crop, 12% above the five-year average.
As agro-marketing expert Yuri Rizha notes in this context, for the countries of the Black Sea region export of soybean and sunflower remains the most stable part of external supplies of oilseed raw materials. Whereas the profitability of rapeseed exports may be limited by its high yield in Europe. Vegetable oil prices are likely to remain stable in the 2025-26 marketing year – despite the rebalancing (biodiesel/food) of the global market for these products.
