Supermarkets rationing sunflower oil amid Ukraine-linked shortage

Iceland has become the latest supermarket to ration sunflower oil amid a shortage caused by the war in Ukraine, placing a purchase limit of one per customer on certain items.
Images posted on Twitter showed signs in an Iceland store telling customers of a limit on purchases of two-litre and five-litre bottles of sunflower oil.
“We have a limited stock of this product,” said the signs, spotted by Grocery Insight CEO Steve Dresser. “Maximum of one per customer.”
On Iceland’s website, two-litre bottles of Flora sunflower oil are out of stock, leaving a 190ml bottle of Frylight cooking spray as the only sunflower oil option.
Waitrose and Morrisons have also introduced a limit on cooking oils of two items per customer.
Iceland MD Richard Walker recently said that sunflower oil shortages had forced the supermarket to temporarily return to using palm oil in own-label food.
Iceland’s 2018 removal of palm oil from own label, a step it took over deforestation concerns, had made it heavily reliant on sunflower oil, which had soared in price by 1,000% during the war in Ukraine, Walker said in a blog.
With the vast majority of the UK’s sunflower oil sourced from Ukraine and Russia, stocks are drying up rapidly. Industry sources have predicted they could run out in a matter of weeks.