They had climbed to the point of pushing Moroccans to almost do without them. Edible oil prices have fortunately returned to more reasonable levels since then, but the situation remains unstable. And for good reason, edible oil is an activity that relies on a raw material that Morocco does not cultivate, soybeans, since its cultivation is highly water-intensive.
“However, this commodity represents 85% of the price of oil, which has been rising for three years,” says Brahim Laroui, Managing Director of Lesieur Cristal, who spoke at our monthly meeting, L’invité des Eco.
He affirms that “the ton of soya which was sold between 700 and 900 dollars, with an exchange rate, at the time, of approximately 9.20 DH, currently reaches more than 2000 dollars”, without even taking into account the sharp rise in the dollar-dirham parity. This double impact, or rather this double inflation, also affected the other seeds used in the production of edible oil. This is particularly the case of sunflower which, following the war in Ukraine, saw its production stop. This represents a significant impact for this region which monopolizes more than half of the world’s sunflower production.
This scarcity of production has obviously, as Laroui confirms, experienced a surge. “It had become almost impossible to be able to buy it,” he says. The worst part is that this situation has had a snowball effect on other alternative oilseeds such as rapeseed, corn, or even palm.
“All of them saw their prices increase considerably during the war in Ukraine”, notes the boss of Lesieur Cristal even if he assures that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is not the only trigger for the soaring prices of l ‘oil. They had taken the elevator just after the health crisis. As a result, consumption has fallen.
“We have seen this through the evolution of the tonnages sold and the regular market studies that we do, in particular on the indicator of consumption per inhabitant”, agrees the CEO of Lesieur Cristal.
A decline that he considers, after all, logical as purchasing power is already affected by inflation. This implies a change in consumption habits. “We have noticed a change in consumption habits, which tend towards reducing the quantity of oils by diluting them in culinary preparations”, notes Laroui. You should know that the consumption of bottled table oil, excluding olive oil, varies from year to year, between 450,000 and 480,000 tonnes per year.
In this context, Lesieur Cristal, which is the second player in the market, has, like its competitors, been impacted, but not only negatively. “The health crisis had, in 2020, an initial positive impact in terms of volume and consumption of soap, our second business, which has increased significantly,” recalls Laroui. 2
The edible oil activity performed well, “the confinement having led to a tendency for households to build up stocks for fear of a possible shortage”.
