Ukraine sharply reduced walnut exports

The President of the Ukrainian Walnut Association, Gennady Yudin, stated that Ukraine is rapidly losing its position in the world walnut market. The reason for this phenomenon is the introduction of an export support regime with minimum prices and unregulated legislation on the registration of the harvest from households, which collapsed official sales in 2025 by 90%.

Over the past 20 years, Ukraine has consistently ranked 3rd or 4th in the world ranking of walnut exporters after the USA, China and Chile. Over the previous 5 years, the state exported more than 160 thousand tons of products for a total of $461.4 million.

“Ukrainian walnuts are valued for their rich, high-quality taste, which they have due to growing on fertile Ukrainian black soil, for their fairly simple logistics to the EU, low price and high quality of their processing,” the expert noted.

At the same time, in 2025, the situation changed dramatically. If previously the average annual export brought $92.2 million to the budget, then last year this figure fell to $9.2 million. The export of peeled walnuts decreased by 97%, and walnuts in shell – by 76%. Of the more than 1 billion euros that the European Union spent on walnut imports, Ukraine’s share was only 6.8 million euros. The main suppliers to the EU were the USA, Chile and China.

The loss of markets is also observed in other countries. According to EastFruit, in 2025 Georgia imported 3,056 tons of walnuts for $13.1 million. notes that imports from Ukraine, which was previously in the top three, have practically ceased.

“New powerful nut players are growing on the global market. “But at this time, Ukraine is losing its world nut status, which others would gladly take,” the head of the association emphasized, calling on the community to formulate specific proposals for dialogue with the authorities.

Tags: export, nuts, Ukraine