Market evolution: Soybean oil (CN 1507) — 2015–2025

Introduction

This report examines the EU's external trade in soybean oil and its fractions (customs code 1507) over the period 2015–2025. The product heading covers both crude soybean oil (CN 150710) and refined soybean oil (CN 150790), excluding chemically modified variants. Over this decade, the EU soybean oil market underwent a dramatic structural transformation: the bloc shifted from being a comfortable net exporter to a significant net importer, trade flows were geographically reoriented under the combined pressure of geopolitics and supply-chain disruption, and global price shocks — notably in 2021–2022 — reshaped competitive dynamics. The overview dashboard provides the underlying data for all figures cited below.

1. From Surplus to Deficit: The EU's Structural Reversal in Soybean Oil Trade

The most striking feature of the decade is the complete inversion of the EU's soybean oil trade balance. In 2015, the EU recorded a trade surplus of approximately €600 million; by 2025, this had turned into a deficit of roughly €84 million — a swing of nearly €700 million. This reversal was driven not by a single shock but by a sustained divergence between declining exports and surging imports.

Export volumes fell by nearly half while import volumes more than doubled

EU export quantity dropped from 1,173,281 tonnes in 2015 to 648,857 tonnes in 2025, a decline of 44.7%. Over the same period, import quantity rose from 317,319 tonnes to 753,849 tonnes, an increase of 137.6%. These two trends, running in opposite directions for a full decade, are the quantitative backbone of the trade-balance reversal.

Sources: General overview

Prices peaked in 2022 before correcting, but the structural shift persisted

Both import and export unit values spiked sharply in 2022, with export prices reaching €1,494/t and import prices €1,356/t — more than double their 2015–2019 averages. This coincided with the global commodity price surge triggered by the disruption of Black Sea supply chains following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. By 2025, prices had corrected to around €1,032/t (exports) and €999/t (imports), but remained roughly 45–48% above 2015 levels. Crucially, the price correction did not reverse the volume trends: the EU continued to export less and import more even as prices normalised.

Crude oil dominates both trade flows, but refined imports grew disproportionately

The product segment breakdown reveals that crude soybean oil (CN 150710) accounts for the vast majority of both imports and exports. However, the growth dynamics differ markedly:

• Crude imports (CN 150710): rose from 292,861 t in 2015 to 692,439 t in 2025 — a sustained, almost uninterrupted increase.
• Refined imports (CN 150790): remained modest for most of the period (typically 10,000–25,000 t/year) but spiked to 169,737 t in 2023 before settling back to around 61,000 t in 2024–2025.
• Crude exports (CN 150710): declined from 958,901 t to 455,248 t, losing more than half their volume.
• Refined exports (CN 150790): were more resilient, falling only from 214,380 t to 193,609 t, after peaking at 305,582 t in 2018.

The 2023 spike in refined imports is striking and may reflect a temporary sourcing shift — possibly related to post-invasion supply-chain rerouting through Turkey or other intermediaries — though the data does not allow a definitive causal attribution.

The EU's net import reliance turned sharply positive

The net import reliance indicator captures this structural shift in a single metric. It moved from −25.9% in 2015 (indicating a net exporter position) to +39.4% in 2025 (net importer). At its most extreme, the EU was a net exporter to the tune of −68.0% (around 2017), meaning exports far exceeded imports. The reversal to +39.4% implies that the EU now depends on external suppliers for nearly two-fifths of the soybean oil consumed beyond what it produces domestically.

2. A More Concentrated and Geopolitically Exposed Import Landscape

Alongside the shift in trade volumes, the geographic composition of the EU's soybean oil trade was profoundly reshaped. A handful of partners — most notably Ukraine — came to dominate imports, while several traditional export destinations in Africa contracted sharply. The result is a more concentrated and potentially more vulnerable import structure.

Ukraine emerged as the EU's overwhelmingly dominant supplier

The partner data tells a remarkable story. Ukraine's soybean oil exports to the EU surged from €38 million in 2015 to €500 million in 2025 — a 1,211% increase. By 2025, Ukraine alone accounted for a dominant share of EU imports by value, making it by far the bloc's largest supplier.

This rise was driven by several reinforcing factors: Ukraine's competitive production costs, the EU–Ukraine Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) which progressively eliminated tariffs, and the EU's own demand growth as domestic production failed to keep pace with consumption.

Russia's imports collapsed to zero, removing a once-significant source

Russia supplied €33.4 million worth of soybean oil to the EU in 2015 and peaked at €43.6 million in 2018. Following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the subsequent EU sanctions regime, Russian soybean oil exports to the EU effectively ceased — dropping to €424 in 2022 and remaining negligible thereafter. While the absolute volumes were not enormous, the abrupt loss of this supply source contributed to the tightening of the import market in 2022.

Argentina's role proved highly volatile

Argentina's trade with the EU in soybean oil was extremely erratic. Starting from a negligible base (€698 in 2015), Argentine exports to the EU surged to a peak of €218.8 million in 2019 before collapsing and recovering unevenly, ending at €39.6 million in 2025. The volatility analysis assigns Argentina a coefficient of variation (CV) of 1.25 on imports — the second-highest among tracked partners, behind only the United States (CV 1.63). This volatility likely reflects swings in Argentine export taxes ("retenciones"), domestic biodiesel blending mandates, and weather-driven crop variability.

Import concentration more than doubled, raising supply-side risk

The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) for import concentration rose from 1,669 in 2015 to 4,605 in 2025 — an increase of 176%. An HHI above 2,500 is generally considered "highly concentrated." Ukraine's growing dominance is the primary driver of this shift. From a supply-security perspective, this concentration creates significant exposure: any disruption to Ukrainian supply — whether from conflict, infrastructure damage, or export policy changes — would have an outsized impact on EU availability.

Export concentration also rose, though less dramatically (from 1,582 to 2,437), reflecting the contraction and reshuffling of EU export destinations.

EU export destinations shifted from Africa and the Middle East towards the UK

On the export side, the EU's traditional markets in North and Sub-Saharan Africa contracted significantly:

• Egypt: from €101.5 million (2015) to €13.5 million (2025), −86.7%
• South Africa: from €57.9 million to €10.0 million, −82.8%
• Tunisia: from €19.2 million to €4.9 million, −74.6%
• Algeria: from €166.5 million to €76.0 million, −54.4%

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom grew from €92.0 million to €166.0 million (+80.5%), likely reflecting both stable post-Brexit bilateral demand and possibly re-routing effects. Morocco remained the EU's largest single export destination, growing modestly from €227.5 million to €271.5 million (+19.4%).

Price shocks clustered in 2021, foreshadowing the 2022 crisis

The supply-shock analysis identifies three major price shock events, all centred on 2021:

These 2021 shocks — which preceded the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by a year — are consistent with the global commodity price rally driven by post-COVID demand recovery, shipping disruptions, and tightening soybean supplies from South America. The fact that Ukraine and Argentina, the EU's two most important soybean oil suppliers outside Europe, both experienced extreme price shocks simultaneously amplified the impact on EU import costs.

3. Domestic Production Growth Amid Shifting Internal Dynamics

While the EU's external trade position deteriorated, domestic production of soybean oil expanded substantially. This section examines how EU-level output evolved, which Member States drove the growth, and what the resulting specialisation pattern reveals about the internal structure of the industry.

EU production nearly doubled over the decade

According to production data, EU soybean oil production quantity rose from 1,705,400 tonnes (2015) to 3,399,622 tonnes (2025), an increase of 99.3%. Production value grew from €947 million to €1,778 million (+87.9%). This near-doubling of output is a significant development and suggests that the EU has been investing in crushing and refining capacity — potentially driven by biofuel mandates and the broader policy push for vegetable oil supply security.

However, this production growth was not sufficient to offset the rising import needs implied by the increase in net import reliance from −25.9% to +39.4%. Domestic consumption evidently grew even faster than production.

Poland and Italy emerged as import powerhouses; Germany's export role collapsed

The Member-State breakdown reveals a dramatic reorientation of intra-EU import flows:

Poland's transformation is especially striking: it went from a minor importer to the EU's largest by far, accounting for more than half of the bloc's total import value in 2025. This is consistent with Poland's rapid expansion of its crushing industry and its geographic proximity to Ukraine.

On the export side, Germany — once the EU's largest soybean oil exporter at €247.9 million — saw its exports collapse by 88.6% to just €28.2 million. In contrast, Italy surged from €13.7 million to €141.3 million (+933%), overtaking Germany. Spain and the Netherlands remained significant exporters but saw stagnation or mild decline.

Specialisation is concentrated in a few Member States

The revealed comparative advantage analysis for 2025 shows that only a handful of Member States are genuinely specialised in soybean oil production for export:

The Netherlands dominates EU production with a 40.3% share, followed by Poland (16.9%) and Spain (12.5%). This concentration of production capacity in a small number of Member States mirrors the import concentration pattern and suggests that the EU's soybean oil supply chain is structurally concentrated at both the production and sourcing levels.

At the other end of the spectrum, Denmark (RSCA −0.996), Cyprus (−0.994), and Ireland (−0.984) are the least specialised — consistent with these countries being primarily importers or having negligible production.

Trade intensity rose dramatically, indicating growing market openness

The trade intensity metric — which captures the share of EU production that is traded externally — jumped from 22.2% in 2015 to 73.8% in 2025. This implies that the EU soybean oil market has become far more integrated with global trade flows over the decade. The export propensity also doubled from 21.5% to 45.0%, suggesting that a growing share of domestic output is being channelled to export markets — even as the overall trade balance deteriorates due to even faster import growth.

Conclusion

The EU's soybean oil market between 2015 and 2025 was reshaped by three converging forces: a fundamental trade-balance reversal from net exporter to net importer, a sharp concentration of import sources around Ukraine, and a turbulent price environment peaking in 2021–2022. Domestic production nearly doubled, but failed to keep pace with demand, leaving the EU with a net import reliance of nearly 40% by 2025.

The concentration of imports from a single partner (Ukraine) — reflected in an HHI of 4,605 — represents the most significant structural vulnerability identified in this analysis. While Ukraine's competitive advantages and the DCFTA trade framework make this partnership economically rational, the geopolitical context of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine adds an element of risk that purely economic analysis cannot fully capture.

Looking ahead, the key variables to watch will be: (i) whether the EU can diversify its import base to reduce concentration risk; (ii) whether continued investment in domestic crushing and refining capacity can slow or reverse the import reliance trend; and (iii) how global soybean oil prices evolve as the post-2022 correction consolidates. The data from this decade suggests that the EU soybean oil market has become structurally more open, more concentrated, and more exposed to external shocks — a combination that warrants continued policy attention.