Bulgaria has decided to increase food reserves and has started to actively buy raw materials in the market to ensure the country’s food supply.
This leads to rising prices, besides wheat and barley, for sunflower seeds. In the field of hulled sunflower seeds, there is a rumour among market participants that there would be restrictions that supplies to the EU would be stopped. According to our research, this is not the case, and there is no information about this from the EU side.
The EU would not allow this either, and it would be a national emergency entry, but it would be collected again by the EU.” Says a customs expert. “It would simply violate existing EU law. Moreover, there is also no official statement from the Bulgarian side that would confirm an export ban to EU member states.” The expert added.
However, companies report customs are obstructing truck drivers at the border. When asked at the Bulgarian customs, it is said that this has to do with the work overload. Currently, customs is checking each truck with raw materials more closely, as there is a ban on exporting various natural materials to non-EU countries. This situation causes a lot of extra work and delays.
However, some companies use this situation as an excuse not to fulfil the concluded contracts or are slow to meet the demands of their customers. The background of this behaviour is, on the one hand, the rising raw material prices for Diesel and, with it, the substantial rise of the transport prices and naturally the strong rise of the raw material prices with sunflower seeds.
The trade is reacting irritably to this issue. “We contract because commodity prices are volatile so that we can provide price certainty for our customers. Of course, we are of this world and see what is happening in the commodity markets and are ready to talk should suppliers get into trouble in this regard, but we are not fooled.” So says a buyer from a major distributor in the food sector.