China's Soybean Crush Weekly (Week 2, 2018)
As operating rate is seen lifted in China’s oil mills this week (Jan. 6th-Jan. 12th), national soybean crush now totals 1,816,500 tonnes (1,444,117 tonnes of soybean meal, 326,970 tonnes of soybean oil), growing by 7.88% from last week’s 1,683,750 tonnes, with a rise of 132,750 tonnes. Meantime, crush capacity utilization is up to 53.19%, 3.89 percentage points higher than last week’s 49.30%. Though operation is resumed one after another coming after eased environmental inspections and bloated soybean meal in some oil mills, and finished holidays for New Year’s Day, in real terms, soybean crush this week is still well below expectations since soybean unloading is somewhat affected by GMO certificates failure upon imported soybeans. Yet, soybean weekly crush may rise to 1.85 Mln tonnes and 1.86 Mln tonnes in the following two weeks respectively provided that the rate is to be lifted with assured soybean supply and healthy crush margins, on this very note, attentions should be further paid to “GMO” issue to see if soybean unloading is to be affected in more and more oil mills.
Soybean crush in year 2017/2018 (as of 1 October 2017) has amounted to 27,369,870 tonnes, 6.048% or 1,561,254 tonnes higher than the figure attained in year 2016/17 of 25,808,616 tonnes. While soybean crush in civil year 2018 (as of January 1, 2018) has totaled 3,029,350 tonnes, a reduction of 339,677 tonnes, or 10.08% from the 3,369,027 tonnes for the same period in 2017.
Figure: Trends of Soybean Weekly Crush in China (2010-2018)
