Small supply of rapeseed pushes producer prices climbing to over $440 (or €398) per ton

In Germany, UFOP reports that increasingly tight rapeseed supply has been driving producer prices, especially since November 2019. Ex-farm prices for rapeseed have risen since the beginning of the 2019/20 marketing year and significantly so over the past three months.

Climbing EUR 32 per tonne from EUR 366 per tonne as at the beginning of November 2019, the price reached EUR 398 per tonne in the third week of January. This was the highest level so far this season and also the highest since March 2017.

The strong price rise was due to the increasingly tight rapeseed supply in Western Europe and Germany. Also, deliveries from the Ukraine have lost a considerable amount of steam. Due to buoyant exports in the first half of the 2019/20 marketing year, the country has only remaining quantities available. According to Agrarmarkt Informations-Gesellschaft (mbH), the German harvest has also largely been marketed. At best, one third the 2019 crop is still in producers’ hands. However, producers are holding back on these residual amounts, hoping for further prices increases. Only a small amount of rapeseed is to be expected from other major supplying countries, such as Australia, in the second half of the season, because fewer plantings and extreme weather conditions sharply reduced the Australian harvest.