Export of mustard seeds from Ukraine: geography of foreign trade and main exporting companies

The expansion of production of niche crops at the current stage of development of agricultural markets looks like one of the most rational options for increasing the efficiency of Ukrainian farmers.

Unlike the most common crops, niche markets are often characterized by relatively stable and relatively high prices. In addition, Ukrainian farmers have a geographically close European market, which is characterized by a potential high demand for such products. However, this possible geography of sales is not limited.
In particular, the seeds of Ukrainian mustard are a predominantly export crop and have a fairly stable external demand. So, as a result of July-March MY 2016/17, 35% of external shipments of such products were to Germany, which is traditionally the key importer in this segment (38.7% of shipments in the same period of the last season).
The list of other major importing countries of mustard seeds of Ukrainian origin hasn”t changed much. It should be noted that although European countries are the predominant export destination, a large share of foreign trade sales falls on Bangladesh (12% in July-March MY 2016/17 and 13% in the same period of the previous season).

The export of mustard seeds from Ukraine is rather poorly concentrated. First of all, this state of affairs is due to the fact that companies usually do not focus their business activity on work with a particular type of niche crops. However, in the particular period under review, the largest company-exporter was FRUIT WORLD UKRAINE LLC.