Edible vegetable oils provide a source of energy essential to securing a balanced and healthy diet for the world’s fast-growing population. The demand for edible vegetable oils is increasing dramatically with the fast increment of the world population.

Current dramatic events, the pandemic, the disruption of supply chains, the conflict in Ukraine, and the fast pace of climate change related events, such as drought, have put unprecedented pressure on the production and distribution of healthy and sustainable edible vegetable oils. Still, producing countries and stakeholders are responding to these challenges by massively investing in resilient and sustainable supply chains.

Policies are welcome to promote resilient and sustainable supply chains but they need to take into account the complexity and dynamics of the challenge and they need to foresee multilateral tools to support the transition.

This brief reports series provides policy makers and stakeholders with a useful tool to better understand the functioning of the supply chains. Particular focus of the first edition is on the oil palm supply chain that has proven to secure a healthy ingredient to billions of individuals worldwide and particularly in developing countries, to be sustainable, and to be resilient.

The reports on the edible palm oil to the EU:

• analyze the dynamics of palm oil imports since 2015 in Europe and in the major
  European economies;
• highlight the variations of palm oil imports in relation to external phenomena;
• present the role played by the different producing countries.