Le rôle croissant des huiles tropicales sur les marchés internationaux : principaux acteurs et produits

In the last thirty years, the international market for vegetable oils has developed substantially especially in terms of production and international trade. Three tropical oils: coconut, palm kernel and mainly palm oil and three countries: Indonesia, Malaysia and to a lesser extent the Philippines and play a major role in the supply of lipids to the rest of the world. Palm oil prices are generally lower than other vegetable oils such as soybean, rapeseed and sunflower, but since the beginning of 2006, they have risen steeply, as prices for most of agricultural products traded in the world, before showing a huge drop by the middle of the 2008 crop year. As palm has the most important oil yield among oilseed crops, future development of tropical oils is a major issue for the world market over the next years. There will be a growing food demand coming from areas in deficit of oilseed products (China, South Asia, Africa, etc.); these countries experience rapid demographic growth and increase in per capita consumption of oils and fats due to income growth during the last decade. Tropical oils could also play a major role in non-food sectors like lipid chemistry and biodiesel, either to be directly used in this production or to substitute other vegetable oils previously used for human food more and more used for bioenergy.