By Richa Naidu

LONDON (Reuters), – The global sunflower oil shortage is affecting the global food sector. Unilever (NYSE ) stated on Thursday it had modified its recipe to use rapeseed oil as a substitute. It could save it money in this time of rising input costs.

Ukraine accounts for approximately half of all world sunflower oil exports. This is the most widely consumed edible oil. But, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two months ago has stopped Ukrainian shipments.

So food manufacturers have begun to use soybean oil and rapeseed oils as alternatives.

Unilever makes Magnum ice creams, Knorr sauces, and Hellmann’s mustard. It also deals in edible oils. Unilever has listed sunflower oil as an ingredient in certain of their products, including Wall’s icecreams and Knorr sauces.

On a conference call with journalists, Chief Executive Alan Jope stated that Unilever is “good at flexing its formulations in order to take advantage of differential costs increases.”

“Since supplies of sunflower oil from Ukraine have become very limited, we were able to change to oils such as rapeseed oil rather effectively.”

Unilever, in an earnings update on Thursday announced that it had increased its prices by 8% for the first quarter. It also cautioned about future price increases due to inflation.

France gives companies six months for product label updates to reflect changes in recipe if sunflower oil is replaced.

The $500 billion global cosmetics industry is suffering similar problems to the food sector. It uses alcohol from organic beets and grains to make perfumes and oil from sunflower seeds to make cosmetics. These are all important crops of Ukraine.