Over nine months of the 2025/26 marketing year, Ukraine exported 48,300 tons of wheat flour — 3% less than a year earlier. But the real story is not in this figure: it lies in where the flour is going and where it is returning from.

Moldova, Palestine — and EU decline

The share of EU countries in Ukrainian flour export structure has shrunk from 44% to 35%. The top-5 buyers according to "Flour Millers of Ukraine" look like this: Moldova — 14,900 tons, Palestine — 9,200 tons, Czechia — 7,400 tons, Israel — 4,400 tons, Spain — 4,200 tons.

This list contains a paradox of wartime logistics. Before the full-scale invasion, Ukraine supplied flour by sea to a wide geography: the UAE, Palestine, Israel, Djibouti, Angola. After the Black Sea ports were blocked, the main buyers became land neighbors — Poland, Romania, Moldova, Croatia. Now, with the restoration of sea routes, Palestine returns to the top-2, while the purely "transit" advantage of the EU weakens.

Flour imports to Ukraine grew by 21%

In parallel, "Flour Millers of Ukraine" recorded growth in flour imports to Ukraine — 21% compared to last season. This is a detail that can easily be missed in the line about 3% export decline — but it is precisely this that reveals the pressure within the industry.

"The flour market in Ukraine has always been highly competitive, but during the period of the great war, competition has increased even more. This happened against the backdrop of an increase in the number of mills, population outflow, and declining demand among industrial consumers".

Rodion Rybchynskyi, head of the "Flour Millers of Ukraine" union, elevatorist.com

The growth in the number of mills during the war is a counterintuitive fact. Small and medium-sized enterprises were opening, focusing on local demand, but together with imports of pasta products from Poland, Turkey, and Italy, they are squeezing the margins of the entire sector.

The Chinese horizon: open, but not wide open

In April 2025, China's ambassador to Ukraine, Ma Shenkun, signed a protocol on sanitary and phytosanitary requirements for Ukrainian wheat flour — the result of at least three years of negotiations. The same week, Beijing blocked 39 out of 66 Kazakhstani animal feed flour producers over the requirement not to use Russian grain.

According to Euromaidan Press, Ukrainian food-grade flour enters China under a different — higher — tariff category than Kazakhstani animal feed flour, which previously entered duty-free. Whether the signed protocol provides for preferential tariffs — neither side has clarified.

• 48,300 tons — wheat flour exports for July–March 2025/26 MY
• –9 p.p. — decline in EU share over the year (from 44% to 35%)
• +21% — growth in flour imports to Ukraine
• China — new potential market, sanitary access is open, tariff access is in question

If Kyiv and Beijing agree on tariff terms, the Chinese market could change the entire balance of this statistics. But for now, flour millers are making money from Moldova and Palestine, while on their own market they compete with their own new mills.

The question for autumn: will the next season record a recovery in the EU share — or will the sea corridor permanently return Ukraine to pre-war Middle Eastern markets, displacing the European direction to the status of a transit peak of 2022–2023?