As a profitable harvesting season yielding a number of hundred tons of lavender oil wraps up in Bulgaria—the world’s high producer—the trade’s future appears to be like extra grey than purple.

With a worldwide manufacturing glut already weighing on costs, Bulgarian distillers now worry new EU laws will additional crimp enterprise.

Whereas the European Union has provided to pause the implementation of the bloc’s revised laws limiting dangerous chemical substances, the clock is ticking.

Nikolay Nenkov, head of Galen-N distillery—one of many largest in Bulgaria—is fearful that he’ll quickly must affix well being warning labels that includes off-putting slogans to his vials of lavender oil.

“We worry that such measures will decrease consumption, curb manufacturing and (thus) the sector may disappear in some areas, which could be very unhealthy contemplating it is a long-standing custom,” he informed AFP.

In an trade already reeling from low costs, labor shortages, local weather change and pests, the deliberate revisions would “create additional pressure”, he added.

‘Huge step ahead’

From the well-known lavender fields surrounding Zelenikovo in central Bulgaria to France’s Provence, producers and farmers have teamed as much as defend their product towards what they see as unfair legal guidelines from Brussels.

Different main producers embody China, Moldova and Greece.

Throughout the EU, important oils are regulated by two major chemical legal guidelines often known as REACH and CLP.

The upcoming revision of each legal guidelines seeks to offer shoppers and firms with higher details about the attainable existence of endocrine disruptors and parts that trigger most cancers or allergic reactions in merchandise.

The evaluate of REACH—which offers with the registration, analysis, authorization and restriction of chemical substances—has been postponed till the fourth quarter of 2023.

However the EU Fee’s proposal to make clear the classification and labeling of drugs beneath the CLP, notably for on-line gross sales, is because of be put to a plenary vote in October.

Confronted with the producers’ resistance, the EU Council has proposed a four-year exemption from the entry into drive of the textual content.

“The issue has not been solved, however this postponement is an enormous step ahead,” mentioned Nenkov.

Overproduction

In a bid to allay the issues of main European producers, Brussels has confused that it “has no plans to start out requiring an evaluation of every molecule in important oils” or “to ban” them, a spokesperson informed AFP.

“Important oils are already outlined as chemical substances”.

At Nenkov’s distillery, 70-year-old technician Vasil Andreev insists that he’s dealing with a “totally pure product” as he filters one other bucket of the pale yellow oil.

It takes as much as 120 kilos of lavender—nonetheless being pressed by foot into big troughs earlier than distillation—to provide one kilo of Bulgaria’s purple gold utilized in well-known cosmetics and perfumes.

However booming manufacturing has oversaturated the market lately, inflicting costs and earnings to plummet. Costs presently hover beneath the prices of manufacturing at round 20-35 euros per kilo, after peaking at 140 euros in 2018.

“For the previous three years, there was international overproduction of lavender oil, with provide outstripping demand, inflicting increasingly more farmers to surrender the crop,” mentioned InteliAgro suppose tank analyst Nikolay Valkanov.

Farmers acknowledge that they’ll ultimately must destroy a few of their aromatic fields to have the ability to return to costs that permit them to cease promoting at a loss.

© 2023 AFP