Exactly at the time when the markets for food are extremely burdened by the war in Ukraine, chaos is spreading in the trade with the important raw material palm oil.
That could lead to shortages of many products, from biscuits to biodiesel to shampoo.
"Increased raw material prices can lead to cost increases that could tend to be passed on to the consumer," warn German confectionery manufacturers.
Stefanie Diemand
Editor in Business.
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Christopher Hein
Business correspondent for South Asia/Pacific based in Singapore.
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Indonesia, the world's largest producer, had initially ordered that it would no longer export any palm oil from next Thursday.
After a sharp jump in prices and protests around the world, it was then said on Monday in the government environment that initially only the export of higher-quality palm oil products would be banned indefinitely.
However, this would still be around 40 percent of the island state's palm oil exports.
Indonesia accounts for a third of global cooking oil exports.
Analysts in Singapore and Jakarta spoke of a "shock", "dramatic consequences for the global food markets" and "panic".
Because the raw material is used industrially around the world, but at the same time it is used by many millions of households for deep-frying.
Growing unrest among food producers
India alone, one of the world's largest consumers, expects its imports of palm oil to fall by a third if Indonesia bans exports.
"The oil palm is qualitatively and quantitatively an irreplaceable oil supplier," says a spokeswoman for the Federal Association of the German Confectionery Industry.
According to the environmental association WWF, soybean or coconut oil could also be an alternative in some fields of application, but these oils are significantly less productive.
This means they need even more space for the same quantities – but that doesn’t exist.
Nevertheless, the world market prices of other oilseeds increased.
At the end of last week, rapeseed prices on the European futures market rose to a record high of 1,081 euros.
The situation is leading to growing unrest among all food producers.
In Germany alone, around 1.8 million tons of palm oil are consumed every year.
A ban would come at an inopportune time for everyone: "Even before the war in Ukraine, the prices for sunflower oils and other vegetable oils had risen sharply due to the increased global demand, while at the same time the harvests for rapeseed and palm oil were poor," says Oetker -Group.
World market leader Nestlé said it was monitoring the situation "closely".
Biscuit manufacturer Bahlsen does not fear any effects, at least in the short term.
The situation is also precarious because Indonesia is not alone.
Other countries have also tried to protect their harvests with protectionism and try to depress domestic prices: Argentina, the world's largest soy exporter, briefly suspended exports in mid-March and then raised the export tax to 33 percent.
The American Department of Agriculture has already called for closer cooperation between governments during the Ukraine war instead of restricting exports of their own crops.
Especially since droughts thinned out the harvests in Argentina, Brazil and Canada.
In addition, the consequences of the pandemic have reduced the number of farm workers in Malaysia, for example.
Malaysia as the winner of chaos'
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has just pointed to the threat of chain reactions: It fears that the sunflower seed harvest will be significantly lower due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
By September, however, importers like India and the European Union will need another 5.4 million tons of sunflower oil.
The substitute could have been palm oil, which is now extremely expensive: "The consequences of the conflict could go beyond the sunflower oil sector and affect other vegetable oils such as palm, soybean and rapeseed oil," warned the FAO before the world's largest exporter Indonesia sealed off.
The first winner of the chaos in Jakarta is neighboring Malaysia, the world's second largest producer.
There, prices for palm oil on the futures market rose by a further 7 percent on Monday.
Indonesia produces more than 50 million tons of palm oil annually, around 60 percent of which is exported as a pre-processed product.
Since January, the government under President Joko Widodo has been trying to slow down the rise in prices for its more than 270 million citizens.
He imposed a cap on the retail price, surcharges on exports and promised further subsidies for domestic sales, although he was unable to slow down the rise in prices.
Cooking oil has become 40 percent more expensive since the beginning of the year.
In contrast, more and more people had protested in the past few weeks.
This puts Widodo under increasing pressure, especially since the world's largest Muslim country is about to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the breaking of the fast.
Since it has been possible to celebrate extensively again for the first time in the two years of the pandemic, the demand for food is particularly high.
"I will monitor and evaluate the implementation of this policy myself so that cooking oil becomes plentiful and affordable in the domestic market," Widodo announced.