Jenny wants to share her 10 years of vegetable oils trade experiences, and hope to give tips to the people who is interested on oil trade. The oil revenue of Jenny every year grew by 20%, and 40% in 2022.
With over 10 years of experience in edible oil sourcing, Jenny experienced many risks at sourcing, and shares her expertise and tips and tricks. Jenny's expertise and data have helped her vegetable oil revenue grow by 20% annually, and she expects an even higher growth rate of 40% in 2022. With the help of Jenny's Trade Data Platform, users can learn to navigate the world of vegetable oil trading with confidence.
How Jenny started edible oil trade?
Jenny has a client who used to import olive oil from Italy, but they had supply problem and communication problem with Italian supplier. The client asked to Jenny if she can help them.
According to research of Jenny, olive oil supply in Italy depend a lot on import since there are always more demand than supply of olive oil in Italy.
However, Spain export around 50% of export volume of olive oil in the world. Jenny decide to find a supplier in Spain. There are biggest international suppliers in Spain, and local suppliers. For the effective communication and quick start, Jenny chose big international suppliers in Spain which are already exporting to South Korea.
Jenny expanded supplier network year by year, and client added more assortment. Through cross-selling, Jenny and client could grew together until the oil crisis through Corona and Ukraine's war.
Grape seed oil crisis
Grape seed oil is made by pressing the grape seeds that are collected after the grapes have been pressed to make wine.
During the Corona pandemic, restaurants were closed -> wine was produced much less -> almost no seeds to produce grape seed oils.
She realized that grape seed suppliers in Spain were holding the seeds to increase the price. The suppliers who could supply grape seed oil were those who had already purchased the seeds before the crisis.
She adjusted her sourcing strategy to multiple sourcing and local supplier sourcing. She just manually called every single grape seed oil supplier in Spain. Some of them just hung up the phone since they don't speak English, and some of them were working at home due to the Corona. She finally found a local supplier who was honest about the price and obtained long-term supply by signing long-term contracts.
However, it was very risky for her to lose millions of euros in revenue if she could not find the right supplier at the right time. It would be very efficient for Jenny if she had the lists of whole grape seed suppliers in Spain. However, her company didn't use any import/export data software at that time.
Sunflower oil crisis
Ukraine and Russia are the biggest producers of sunflower seeds and sunflower oils. Due to the war in both countries, all food companies that were using sunflower oils to produce their products and fast food restaurants suffered from increased sunflower oil prices and shortages. Many of them switched from sunflower oil to olive oil or pomace oil, but then again, they needed to change the label. It means that they needed to stop the production for a while.
Jenny managed to persuade the clients to replace the sunflower oil with another oil. But some clients didn't want to replace the oil and stopped purchasing from Jenny. Jenny realized again how important it is to find the right supplier at the right moment; it is also not enough to emphasize the importance of implementing a sourcing strategy.
Jenny decided to write the next article about the sourcing strategy.
Tip : Where did Spain export olive oil to in 2020?
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