The company Floarea Soarelui, the largest producer of vegetable oils in Moldova, has stopped its work due to a shortage of sunflower seeds. This was announced by the company's director, Stella Ostrovetschi, as Infotag reported on March 26.
According to her, Floarea Soarelui has no way of purchasing sufficient quantities of sunflower seeds on the domestic market and cannot import oilseeds “because the import licensing mechanism introduced since October 2023 is practically not working”.
“In January 2024, we tried to obtain the right to import seeds from Ukraine, but the technical commission of the Moldovan Ministry of Agriculture did not give us a license,” said S. Ostrovetschi.
She also pointed out that the company can process more than 1.000 tons of sunflower seeds per day, or that it needs large quantities that it cannot purchase to continue operating. For this reason, the plants in Balti and Danube Oil in Giurgiulesti were shut down.
At the same time, the director of the company added that, according to experts' calculations, Moldovan farmers have about 100 thousand tons of sunflowers, but do not want to sell the oilseeds, relying on an increase in prices during the summer period.
At the same time, the report notes that the “Farmers' Power” association claims that “there are sunflowers on the Moldovan market, but the Trans-Oil group, to which Floarea Soarelui belongs, is a monopolist on the market and is trying to To dictate terms and prices”. Mold-Street writes that Floarea Soarelui buys sunflower seeds for less than 7.000 lei per ton, while farmers demand a price of 8.000-10.000 lei per ton.
Source: APKinform (Ukraine)