The increase in home cooking seems to be limiting the impact of tumbling oil prices on the oilseed sector. In recent successive weeks, the retail sector has had a large increase in demand for products as populations adapt to full-time home life with a big increase in cooking oil.

Sales of cooking oil in the last 12-week period are the highest in at least the last two years. Retail sales to 22 March were 14% higher than the last 12-week period (ending 23 February) which included Christmas sales (Kantar).

According to AHDB, “with this demand we have seen rape oil have a less secure correlation with crude oil as fundamentals around edible demand have caused support for rape oil. It’s worth noting that the euro weakening against the dollar has provided support too”.

This week, we saw the price of US oil turn negative for the first time in history

Before lockdown, the oilseed market was mainly following the crude oil market but there could be a divergence as more people cook at home and use more oil than the amount used when eating out.

This week, we saw the price of US oil turn negative for the first time in history, meaning that oil producers were paying buyers to take the commodity away, as there were fears that storage capacity could run out.

We have witnessed the demand for bio-fuels and ethanol subdue significantly as road traffic slows abruptly, which has pressured many agricultural commodities that are utilised by the energy sector, such as maize.