Only 27.37 lakh tonnes of palm oil imported in the first half

16-May-2025 08:51 PM

Mumbai. Data compiled by the Solvent Extractors Association of India (C) shows that during the first half of the current marketing season i.e. from November 2024 to April 2023, the total import of palm category oils in the country declined to 27.37 lakh tonnes, which was much less than the import of 42.14 lakh tonnes during the same period of the marketing season of 2023-24.

The imports of the current season included 7.39 lakh tonnes of RBD palmolein, 19.65 lakh tonnes of crude palm oil and 33 thousand tonnes of crude palm kernel oil.

In India, crude and refined edible oil of the palm category is imported mainly from Indonesia and Malaysia, while it is also imported in small quantities from some other countries including Thailand.

Although palm oil imports reached 842 lakh tonnes in November 2024 and 5 lakh tonnes were also recorded in December 2024, a period of steep decline started after that.

The reason for this was that the export offer price of palm oil reached above soybean oil. Usually the price of soybean oil is 100-150 dollars per tonne higher than palm oil, but from December 2024, the price of palm oil itself became 50-100 dollars per tonne higher than soybean oil.

As a result, the interest of Indian refiners especially in the purchase of crude palm oil (CPO) decreased significantly and they started increasing the import of soybean oil and sunflower oil.

According to the available data, imports of palm oil (including refined palmolein) declined to 2.75 lakh tonnes in January 2025.

After this, imports improved to 3.74 lakh tonnes in February and increased to 4.25 lakh tonnes in March, but once again declined to around 3.21 lakh tonnes in April.

This means that palm oil imports could not reach the level of 5 lakh tonnes in any month of the year 2025. Now everyone's focus is on May.