Compare prices for pure sesame oil across brands.
Sesame oil is a fully imported category in Canada. Sesame is a tropical and sub-tropical oilseed that does not grow at commercial scale anywhere in the country, so every bottle on an Edmonton shelf reflects an international raw material chain. China is the world's single largest producer, accounting for roughly 40 percent of global sesame oil output, but the seed itself is sourced from a relatively small set of countries: India (around 800,000 tonnes per year of seed), Myanmar (around 400,000 tonnes), Sudan, Tanzania (around 300,000 tonnes), Nigeria, and Ethiopia. China, Japan, and South Korea together account for around 74 percent of global finished sesame oil exports.
Africa has become the marginal supplier in this market. African production is growing at a compound annual rate near 9.8 percent, with Tanzania, Mozambique, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, and Sudan absorbing more of the seed export volume historically supplied by India. Indian production was cut to 100,000 to 120,000 tonnes for 2025 because of weather, and the resulting demand has pulled additional seed out of West and East Africa. Burkina Faso reduced its 2025/2026 producer floor price by 14.4 percent in response to global oversupply.
Sudan is a particularly important and unstable node. Sesame accounted for nearly 30 percent of Sudan's agricultural exports in the decade ending 2021, and the country was one of the top three global seed exporters in 2024, sharing a 45 percent combined share with India and Nigeria. The civil conflict that began in April 2023 has turned sesame into what Chatham House and other analysts describe as a "conflict commodity," with armed groups competing for control of producing regions in Gedaref, Kordofan, and Blue Nile. Despite this, Sudanese seed exports rose in 2024 as cultivation shifted to White Nile state. The result for downstream buyers, including Asian sesame oil mills that supply the Canadian market, is that headline supply is intact but counterparty, logistics, and traceability risk on Sudanese-origin lots is elevated.
Sesame is a short-season crop, with most growing regions running a single annual cycle. In Sudan and Ethiopia, planting falls in June and July with harvest from October through December. In India, the kharif crop is planted with the monsoon in June and harvested in September and October, with a smaller rabi crop harvested between February and April. Myanmar's monsoon sesame is harvested between September and November. This concentration creates a roughly six-month window during which the bulk of new-crop seed enters the world market, and processors run mill capacity hardest from the fourth quarter into the first quarter of the following year. Pricing for finished retail sesame oil in Canada therefore reflects pack-season decisions taken during this window rather than current-month seed cost.
Conventional white sesame seed traded largely between USD 1,700 and 2,000 per tonne FOB through 2025, with premium grades — black sesame, organic-certified, and low-aflatoxin lots used by quality-focused Asian mills — trading at USD 2,300 to 2,700 per tonne. West African white sesame fell below USD 1,000 per tonne FOB at points in 2025, around 170 CFA francs per kilogram lower than 2024, reflecting persistent oversupply rather than shortage. The global sesame seed market is forecast to grow from USD 14.7 billion in 2025 to USD 15.8 billion in 2026 by volume and value combined. For finished oil, this means raw material costs have not been the primary driver of upward retail price movement. Where retail prices have firmed, processing, packaging, freight, and currency effects are doing more of the work.
The two dominant retail formats reflect very different processes. Toasted (or "pure" in Asian retail nomenclature) sesame oil is produced by roasting the seed at around 180 to 200 degrees Celsius before pressing, which is the step responsible for the dark colour and intense aroma that defines the cooking-and-finishing format used in East Asian cuisines. Cold-pressed sesame oil is extracted at temperatures below roughly 48 degrees Celsius, retains a lighter colour and milder flavour, and is more often positioned for general culinary use or skin care.
For retail, the toasted format is the higher-margin and more brand-defensible product. It requires precise roast control, dedicated equipment, and heritage know-how, all of which support brand premiums that are difficult to dislodge with private label. Cold-pressed and refined oils are more commoditized and more sensitive to seed price swings.
The two brands carried at Edmonton retail occupy distinctly different positions in this category.
Kadoya Sesame Mills was founded in 1858 on Shodoshima Island in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan, and continues to operate from a single sesame-focused plant on the island. The company depends almost entirely on imported African seed — Japan does not produce sesame at meaningful scale — and processes it into the toasted dark sesame oil that has been the company's flagship for more than 160 years. Kadoya exports to over 30 countries, with the United States as its largest market. Pricing reflects this positioning: a single-plant, narrow-portfolio Japanese heritage producer carrying a specialty premium, with Japanese-origin label, glass bottle, and aroma profile justifying a higher per-100ml price than comparable Taiwanese or Chinese-origin oils. Tariff treatment supports this trade flow: under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), in force between Canada and Japan since December 2018, tariffs on most Canadian and Japanese agri-food trade have been eliminated or are on a tariff-elimination schedule, with roughly 99 percent of tariff lines among CPTPP parties duty-free at full implementation. Sesame oil from Japan accordingly enters Canada free of duty under CPTPP rules of origin.
Foreway is the brand of Flavor Full Foods Inc., established in 1983 and headquartered in Taipei with a production plant in Changhua County, Taiwan. Flavor Full Foods is the largest sesame oil manufacturer and exporter in Taiwan, with annual sesame oil capacity of more than 12,000 tonnes plus more than 5,000 tonnes of related sesame products, and exports to over 26 countries. Foreway's Taiwanese plant carries ISO, BRC, SQF, Kosher, and Halal certifications, supporting export into the EU, the United States, and Canada. In Canadian retail (including Loblaws-banner stores such as Real Canadian Superstore and Your Independent Grocer), Foreway is positioned a step below Kadoya on shelf price for an equivalent toasted oil. This is the structural pattern of the category: a Japanese specialty brand at a premium and a Taiwanese scale producer at a more accessible price point, with the gap reflecting heritage positioning, country of origin, packaging, and import volumes rather than fundamental differences in seed sourcing — both ultimately rely heavily on African and Indian seed.
Canada and Taiwan do not have a free-trade agreement, but Canada's applied Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) duty for sesame oil under HS 1515.50 is zero percent. There is therefore no tariff differential between Japanese and Taiwanese sesame oil entering Canada — the price gap is entirely driven by brand, processing, freight, and FX, not by trade policy.
Sesame oil is largely insulated from the trade-policy turbulence that has affected other imported foods in 2024 and 2025. The Canada-U.S. counter-tariff exchange of early 2025 — the 25 percent counter-tariffs Canada imposed on March 4, 2025, and largely removed effective September 1, 2025 — never targeted Asian-origin sesame oil and is not material to this category. Sesame oil enters Canada at zero MFN, duty-free under CPTPP from Japan, and without significant non-tariff barriers beyond standard import compliance. The relevant trade-policy variables are therefore one step removed: ocean freight rates from East Asia to the Port of Vancouver, container availability, and the Canadian dollar against the Japanese yen and the New Taiwan dollar.
The most consequential domestic regulation for this category is allergen law rather than trade. Health Canada added sesame to the list of priority food allergens in 2017, requiring clear declaration on prepackaged foods sold in Canada. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency enforces this under the Food and Drug Regulations. For pure sesame oil, the practical effect is a labelling rather than a sourcing constraint, but cross-contamination controls in shared facilities and the documentation burden imposed on importers add a small, persistent compliance cost that did not exist in the same form before 2017. Aflatoxin and pesticide-residue testing on imported seed and oil is also a recurring compliance line item; CFIA's National Chemical Residue Monitoring Program covers imported edible oils alongside domestic production.
Both Kadoya and Foreway move into Canada by container from East Asian ports, typically discharging at the Port of Vancouver before being trucked or railed inland. Edmonton's inland location adds a freight premium relative to Vancouver and Calgary on every imported case. For ambient-stable products like sesame oil, this premium is smaller than for refrigerated categories, but it remains a structural cost of being served from a coastal entry point. Glass-bottle SKUs (the Kadoya 327ml format is a glass bottle) carry higher per-unit freight cost than equivalent plastic packaging because of weight and breakage allowance, which is one reason the category generally moves to plastic at larger sizes and lower price tiers.
The Loblaw national distribution centre in Calgary handles inbound Asian-origin grocery freight for Western Canada banners, and product flows from there to Edmonton stores. Inventory turns in this category are slow relative to staples like dairy or bread, which means importers and retailers carry weeks to months of cover, dampening short-term shelf price response to seed-cost movement.
The structural supply position for sesame oil in Edmonton is comfortable. Global seed supply is in surplus, African production is growing, and the category faces no active tariff pressure into Canada. The brands carried at retail occupy stable, well-differentiated positions: Kadoya as a heritage Japanese specialty producer covered by CPTPP duty-free entry, and Foreway as a scale Taiwanese producer with the certifications needed for global retail and a structurally lower shelf price. The price drivers most likely to move retail sesame oil in 2026 are ocean freight from East Asia, the Canadian dollar against the yen and New Taiwan dollar, and the indirect effects of the Sudan conflict on premium-seed availability for higher-end Asian mills, rather than seed-level scarcity or trade policy.