On April 4, the first vessel carrying 5,000 tons of rapeseed oil was shipped from Kazakhstan’s Aktau port; full loading took approximately 2.5 days. The buyer was the Iranian company Kourosh Food Industry, and the shipper was one of Kazakhstan’s leading oilseed processing plants, a member of the National Association of Oilseed Processors (NAOP). On May 13, loading of a second vessel with the same volume of sunflower oil was completed. According to NAOP Chairman Yadykar Ibragimov, Iran’s annual import of vegetable oils amounts to about 1.5 million tons, and over the past three years, Kazakh oilseed plants have exported more than 100,000 tons of products to Iran, 94% of which was meal.
The NAOP estimates the potential of Aktau port at 3–4 vessels per month (150,000–200,000 tons per year) and forecasts that exports to Iran could exceed 500,000 tons annually. Under the 2026–2028 roadmap, the industry plans to increase foreign currency earnings to over $1 billion.