Crude Sunflower Oil in Bulk — Supplier and Exporter

What crude sunflower oil is, and how it differs from refined

Crude sunflower oil is oil as it comes off extraction — pressing, solvent extraction, or pressing followed by solvent extraction of the cake — filtered clear of seed solids but not yet neutralised, bleached, deodorised or winterised. It still carries the phosphatides, free fatty acids, waxes, pigments, sterols and tocopherols that a refining line removes or reduces, and it still smells and tastes of the seed.

That is the point of buying it. For a refiner the value sits in taking the oil before those steps so that the refining loss, the bleaching earth consumption, the wax removal and the finished colour are all decisions made in your own plant against your own cost base, rather than paid for in someone else's margin.

Who buys crude sunflower oil, and what for

Crude oil is bought by buyers who own the next step. The destinations for it divide fairly cleanly:

• Vegetable oil refineries producing bottled cooking oil for retail and food-service markets, who want the oil before neutralisation, bleaching and deodorisation so that the process is theirs.
• Technical and oleochemical users formulating paints, alkyd resins, printing inks, lubricants, coatings and soaps, for whom the unrefined fatty acid and sterol profile is the raw material.
• Biodiesel and esterification plants running vegetable oil as a feedstock, where free fatty acid content drives the pretreatment route and the catalyst choice.
• Feed compounders using sunflower oil as a dense energy source in livestock and poultry rations.

Non-degummed, degummed, and the gum question

Non-degummed crude sunflower oil still contains its phosphatides; degummed oil has had most of them taken out by water or acid degumming before shipment. Which form you buy depends on one thing: whether your plant has degumming capacity and wants to use it. If it does, non-degummed gives you the whole process and the gum stream. If it does not, phosphorus arriving in the tank turns into bleaching earth consumption and refining loss downstream.

Sunflower oil carries comparatively little phosphatide next to soybean oil, which is why sunflower lecithin is a small by-product stream rather than a commodity in its own right. What sunflower does carry is wax, drawn from the hull, and that is why winterisation is a standard stage on a sunflower refining line and not on every oil's. If cold clarity matters in your finished product, the wax is the parameter to think about at the crude stage, not after refining.

• Why degumming mattersPhosphorus, gums and what they cost downstream
• Pressing or solvent extractionHow the extraction route shapes the crude oil you receive
• Winterisation explainedWax removal, cold clarity and when it is worth paying for

Codex reference figures for sunflower oil

The figures below are the limits set by the Codex Alimentarius standard for named vegetable oils (CODEX STAN 210-1999), the internationally accepted reference for sunflower oil. They describe the standard, not a single consignment: the certificate of analysis issued with your shipment is what governs, and your own specification may be tighter.

• Relative density (20°C/water at 20°C): 0.918 – 0.923
• Refractive index (ND 40°C): 1.461 – 1.468
• Saponification value: 188 – 194 mg KOH/g oil
• Iodine value (Wijs): 118 – 141
• Unsaponifiable matter: not more than 15 g/kg
• Acid value, cold pressed and virgin oils: not more than 4.0 mg KOH/g
• Peroxide value, cold pressed and virgin oils: up to 15 milliequivalents of active oxygen per kg

Note what the standard does and does not cover. The identity characteristics above apply to sunflower oil as an oil, whatever its processing state, which is why they are the right reference for checking that what arrived is genuinely sunflower oil. The quality limits, however, are written for refined grades and for cold pressed and virgin grades — Codex does not publish a separate free fatty acid or peroxide ceiling for crude oil destined for refining. That gap is deliberate, and it is why crude is contracted against the buyer's own thresholds rather than against the standard.

What a refiner should specify in the enquiry

Send us the parameters and limits your process requires and we will confirm against them before loading. The list below is what a complete crude oil enquiry normally sets:

• A free fatty acid ceiling, expressed the way your contracts express it, as acid value or as a percentage of oleic acid.
• Moisture and volatile matter, and insoluble impurities, either separately or combined as your contract does it.
• A phosphorus limit, if your bleaching and refining loss model depends on one, and whether you want the oil degummed or not.
• Wax content or a cold test, where the finished product has to stay clear at low temperature.
• Colour, if your bleaching capacity sets a practical inbound ceiling.
• Trace metal limits, particularly iron and copper, which drive oxidation during storage and transit.
• Whether solvent-extracted oil is acceptable to your process and your market.
• The laboratory method for each parameter, named in the contract, because the number means little without it.
• Volume, packing format, destination port, Incoterm and loading window.

How crude sunflower oil is priced, and what moves it

Crude sunflower oil is priced against the Black Sea sunflower oil market rather than from a list, so we do not publish a figure and no honest supplier can. A number written on a page today describes a loading window that has already moved by the time you read it. An offer is built for the volume, the loading window, the packing format and the destination you name.

What you can usefully monitor are the drivers behind the offer: the Ukrainian sunflower harvest and the crush pace, seed availability and the margin crushers can earn, the price of competing oils, ocean and inland freight, currency movement, and how tight the loading slots are in the window you want. Buyers who track those negotiate from a stronger position than buyers who ask for a price and wait.

Loading, sampling and inspection

A crude oil contract is only as good as the sample behind it. A composite sample is drawn at loading and the certificate of analysis for the consignment reports against the parameters the contract names. Because crude is heterogeneous in a way refined oil is not, how the sample is drawn matters as much as what the laboratory reports: specify whether you want a composite from the loading line or from the tank, and whether retained samples are to be held.

Where your purchase terms require independent verification, you may appoint a third-party inspector — SGS, Intertek and Bureau Veritas are the names buyers most often use — to attend sampling at loading at your own cost. The appointment is yours rather than ours, which is precisely what makes the result worth having.

Packing and tank formats for crude parcels

Crude oil moves in bulk almost by definition, because a buyer who is going to refine it has tank capacity. The formats we load are:

• Flexitank, for a full container load into a port with liquid bulk handling and onward road tankering.
• ISO tank, where a dedicated stainless vessel is preferred, typically on repeat lanes into the same receiver.
• Steel drums of 190 kg, for small parcels, trial lots and technical buyers taking modest quantities for formulation work.
• IBC, where a part load has to reach a site with no tank intake.

Tell us the destination port and the discharge facilities there and we will say which formats are practical on that lane. Crude oil is not bottled, so retail packs do not apply to this grade.

Trade terms, documents and lead time

We quote FOB or CIF to a named port under Incoterms 2020. Under FOB you book the vessel and carry freight and marine insurance from the port of shipment; under CIF we arrange carriage and insurance to the port you name and quote a single landed figure. The port has to be named in the contract either way. Payment is by bank transfer (T/T) in EUR or USD, and lead time is typically 7 to 14 days from order confirmation.

A certificate of analysis and a certificate of origin accompany every consignment, alongside the commercial invoice, the packing list and the bill of lading. Crude oil arriving for industrial rather than food use can attract different requirements at import depending on how the destination classifies it, so name the import country early and we will confirm what else has to travel with the goods.

Enquiring

Refine Sunflower Oil manufactures and exports edible oils from Gareth Jones St 8, 04119 Kyiv, Ukraine, and has been exporting since 2000. Our operation runs to HACCP and ISO 22000 food safety standards, and non-GMO grades are available on request. Write to export@refinesunfloweroil.com, or use the contact form, with the volume, the packing format, the destination port, the Incoterm and the specification limits your process works to.

• What moves the priceThe market signals an importer should be watching
• Request a quotationSend volume, limits, packing and destination port

Related grades and the refined counterpart

Most buyers comparing this grade also price the refined version, since the choice turns on whether you refine in-house or buy the finished oil.

• Refined sunflower oilRBD grade for food manufacturing, frying and bottling
• All sunflower oil gradesThe full range we export, refined and crude
• Crude canola oilDegummed rapeseed oil as a refinery input