One of the largest cargo ships in the world docked at the "Port of Varna" for the first time. It is of the Panamax class and delivered 58,000 tons of rapeseed to Bulgaria, dariknews.bg reported.
The cargo comes from Canada and is intended for the largest processor of oilseed crops in our country. The rapeseed was produced in Canada and will be processed in the factories of the Bulgarian company. The import is carried out from there due to the lack of raw material in our country and the restrictions on imports from Ukraine.
In Bulgaria, the processing capacities for sunflower oil, peeled seeds and meal are for over 4 million tons per year, and even in the best agricultural years The annual production of sunflower in our country has never been enough to cover their costs - it is about 2 - 2.2 million tons. That is why processors import sunflower from other countries - mainly from Ukraine, which is the largest producer in the world.
However, with the introduction of the ban on sunflower imports from Ukraine last year and the poor and not so high-quality harvest, the Bulgarian processing industry does not have enough raw materials and is actually facing a crisis and the closure of enterprises. Before the import bans, Bulgaria was in the top 5 sunflower processors and exporters in the world. Now these positions have been lost. Tens of millions of euros of revenue have also been lost, which were otherwise invested and spent in Bulgaria.