The war in Ukraine has led to a shortage of sunflower and vegetable oil for cooking, hitting food producers, restaurants and retailers across Britain and Europe.

Larry Soon, Chairman of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) has stepped forward to offer supplies of palm oil to end the crisis which experts believe is a healthier option than vegetable and sunflower oil.

However, palm oil sales have been previously banned in places like Iceland frozen food chain and restricted in others because of concerns over how its farming impacts rainforests and leads to orangutans being killed.

So any move to increase the supply of palm oil is expected to enrage the environmentalist lobby.

Malaysia, though, has argued that its palm oil is produced in more carefully monitored processes than some other countries, which means the rainforest is not impacted and rare species are protected.

The intervention over supplying palm comes as supermarket chain Waitrose has started rationing its supplies of cooking vegetable oil. 

Signs have recently gone up in Waitrose stores telling customers that they can only purchase two items per person and customers are also limited to two sunflower oil purchases when shopping online.

Iceland has already had to publicly reverse its widely publicised repudiation of palm oil products. A statement from its chairman, Richard Walker, acknowledged the reality that restarting purchases of palm oil is the only way to keep shelves stocked because sunflower oil has become “totally unobtainable” as prices have risen by 1,000 per cent as a result of war in Ukraine. 

Around 80 per cent of the UK’s sunflower oil comes from Ukraine, with Russia making up a significant portion of the rest of the country’s supplies.  

Alongside this, the crisp brand Walkers has been forced to change its recipe due to the shortage of available sunflower oil.

Palm oil is an essential food ingredient in the UK, found in a vast variety of products including: chocolate, ice cream, biscuits, margarine, instant noodles, pizza, ketchup and packaged bread. It can be used as a sustainable and effective replacement for sunflower oil in most of those food products, and many more besides.

Producers also claim that palm oil is the world’s most land-efficient vegetable oil, producing more food on less land than any other oil crop. 

MPOC criticises the use of “outdated stereotypes to generate headlines”, by Iceland and others that have ignored the industry’s years of commitment to sustainable palm oil.

In total, palm oil supplies 40 percent of the world’s vegetable oil on just under 6 percent of the total land used for vegetable oil production. 

The WWF estimates that trying to replace palm oil with other vegetable oils such as soybean, coconut, or sunflower could require as much as ten times more land. This would lead to far more deforestation and worse environmental outcomes.

Mr Soon said: “Sustainable palm oil is a viable substitute for sunflower oil, and while the war in Ukraine impacts supply and inevitably food prices, Malaysia stands ready to help.

“Iceland (supermarket)’s campaign against palm oil has always ignored the industry’s shift towards sustainability, relying instead on outdated stereotypes to generate headlines. 

“The reality is that palm oil is five times more efficient than sunflower oil, so we can meet British and European demand using less land – and achieve our ambition of 100 percent sustainable palm oil in Europe in the process.”