Between January and September 2017, German biodiesel exports climbed around 11 per cent to 1.16 million tonnes. Just about 94 per cent were shipped to EU-28 countries. This was up 16 per cent from the previous year.
The biggest recipient of German biodiesel was the Netherlands with imports seeing a 1.5 per cent rise to 428,000 million tonnes. Demand from Poland continued to climb strongly. Taking 189,000 million tonnes, the country was the second largest purchaser.
According to information published by Agrarmarkt Informations-Gesellschaft (mbH), many other EU countries also raised their imports from Germany. Denmark boosted its imports 183 per cent to 78,146 tonnes, outstripping France to move to third place. Exports to Great Britain were particularly dynamic, rocketing 276 per cent. France, Austria and Switzerland also imported clearly more biodiesel than in the same period a year earlier.
By contrast, exports to the US continued to decline, falling 99.7 per cent to 89 tonnes. The reasons were the country’s political focus on domestic production from soybean oil and the firm euro that drove up prices for EU commodities in non-euro countries. Norway’s orders for biodiesel dropped on average 55 per cent in terms of quantity.
The Union zur Förderung von Oel- und Proteinpflanzen (UFOP) stated that the German biodiesel industry’s export strength was a key factor in stabilising demand for rapeseed oil, as biodiesel from rapeseed was being more and more replaced by biodiesel from waste oils. The association pointed out that domestic consumption of rapeseed biodiesel (RME) dropped from 1.3 million tonnes in 2015 to 0.86 million tonnes in the quota year 2016. UFOP estimated RME sales for 2017 at about the same volume, although the GHG reduction quota was raised from 3.5 to 4.0 per cent.
