Russian Attack; Indonesian F&B Businesses Seek Grain Suppliers Outside Ukraine

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Indonesian food and beverage businesses are set to look for new suppliers of grain outside Ukraine amid the nation's conflict with Russia. Ukraine is one of the major suppliers of wheat for the domestic F&B industry, apart from Australia.

Adhi S Lukman, chairman of the Indonesian Food and Beverage Association (Gapmmi), said that businesses have begun to anticipate problems by finding new wheat suppliers.

"Producers have surely started communicating with other suppliers. And for the long term, they would need to prepare the substitution for flour," Adhi told Bisnis on Wednesday, March 2.

In 2021, Ukraine supplied 26 percent of Indonesia's 11.5 million tons wheat demand. But Indonesia's supply of wheat is mostly imported from Australia.

Adhi said that so far the Russia-Ukraine conflict has had no impact on the wheat supply to Indonesia. He added that if the Russian invasion did not last long, there would be little impact on the supply of raw materials and energy prices.

But if the invasion lasts for a long period of time, raw material prices and energy costs may continue to rise. "Although the prices of many [commodities] have already started rising as a psychological impact, a prolonged war would create a bigger impact," Adhi said. 

Bisnis