The EU imported its lowest volume of soyabeans in three years. Image source: EU Commission/AMI
The European Union (EU) imported the lowest volume of soyabeans in three years between July 2025 and mid-March 2026, Germany’s Union for the Promotion of Plants and Protein (UFOP) reports.
According to European Commission (EC) data, the EU purchased just over 8.7M tonnes of soyabeans between 1 July 2025 and 15 March 2026, a drop of around 1.1M tonnes compared to the same period the previous season.
Although the USA and Brazil remained the most important supplier countries, neither country matched the volumes reached the previous year, the 25 March report said.
At 4.1M tonnes, the EU received a significantly lower volume of soyabeans from the USA in the first eight-and-a-half months of the current season compared to the same period the previous year, when the total reached 5.2M tonnes.
As a result, the US share of total imports fell to approximately 47%.
Soyabean shipments from Brazil – the EU’s second largest supplier – dropped by 2% to approximately 2.7M tonnes, accounting for just over 32% of total imports.
During the same period, soyabean imports from Ukraine into the EU declined by around 19%, falling to 905,900 tonnes.
Meanwhile, deliveries from Canada reached 831,000 tonnes, a rise of around 58% compared to the same period of the previous year.
While Argentina did not deliver any significant tonnages in 2024/25, it supplied around 50,100 tonnes to the EU market this year, according to analysis by Agrarmarkt Informations‑Gesellschaft (AMI).
The decline in soyabean imports was mainly due to a drop in EU pig slaughterings from 250M to 220M between 2021 and 2023, followed by a moderate recovery to 227M slaughterings in 2025, UFOP said.