According to a media report, the wholesale chain Metro is temporarily rationing the sale of individual products.
"There is currently high demand" for edible oils, the company told the magazine "Spiegel" on Tuesday.
In individual markets, there could therefore be “short-term and isolated limited availability”.
The company did not initially say which products were involved.
The background to the increased demand for edible oils such as sunflower oil is the war in Ukraine.
According to the Association of the Oilseed Processing Industry in Germany (OVID), Germany covers 94 percent of its sunflower oil requirements from exports.
According to this, the world's most important exporters are Russia and Ukraine: in 2020, 13.6 million tons of sunflower oil were exported worldwide, of which 51 percent came from Ukraine and a further 27 percent from Russia.
Flaxseed and rapeseed oil could also be affected by the conflict: According to OVID, almost 90 percent of the flaxseeds processed in the EU are imported.
Of these imports, 37 percent come from Russia and another 5 percent from Ukraine.
Germany also obtains 10 percent of the processed rapeseed from Ukraine.