Such forecasts have been caused by decrease of the acreages under crop and decline in the oil-bearing processing amounts. Thus, a shortage of raw materials may arise on the national husk pellets market.
According to the agrarians’ forecasts, the amounts of sunflower seed processing may slightly drop in the second half of 2015. The expected figures come up to 4.18 million tons versus 4.97 million tons in the first half of the year.
Furthermore, the fact of cutback of sunflower acreages also causes concerns. Such regions in particular as Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, and Kherson oblasts reduce planting volumes due to a downward trend in profitability, while the agrarians from Cherkasy, Poltava, Vinnytsia, and Kirovohrad oblasts switch gradually to growing soybeans.
However, according to the opinions of some experts, the final forecasts may be made only upon completion of the spring sowing campaign, as sunflower prices tend to increase on the domestic market and this may change farmers’ negative states of mind. For example, just during the first week of April the prices rose by 4.97%, whereas the annual growth made up 132.84%. This situation will certainly be one of the key determinants of the prices for sunflower husk pellets, which, according to the Price Bulletin No.3 (March) of Ukrainian Biofuel Portal http://pellets-wood.com/husk-sunflower-pellets-b341.html, demonstrated 7% reduction dynamics in the first quarter of the year 2015.
The crushing capacity growth may become additional stimulus to the increase of sunflower sowing, which may lead to the rise of seed shortage and growth of the competitive ability of this crop. In a point of fact, two processing plants are planned to be put in operation during this year only with the processing capacity up to 5,000 tons daily.
Therefore, it is extremely difficult for the experts to make any certain forecasts at this stage as for the situation on the market of sunflower husk pellets.
