Notably, imports of soybeans in oil mills have been increasing with large soybean arrivals in recent months for profitable crush margins, and estimated 124 vessels loaded with 8,088,900 tonnes of imported soybeans may arrive at China’s ports in January 2018, according to Cofeed, in that operating rate will be lifted further seeing sufficient soybean supplies. Moreover, national soybean crush this week totals 1,904,750 tonnes (1,514,276 tonnes of soybean meal, 342,855 tonnes of soybean oil), up 4.85% or 88,250 tonnes from 1,816,500 tonnes attained in the week before. Meantime, soybean crush capacity utilization is increased to 55.77%, 2.58 percentage points higher than last week’s 53.19%. Soybean weekly crush will increase to 1.95 Mln tonne and 1.98 Mln tonnes in the following two weeks respectively tracking lifted operating rate when it is the peak time for stockpiling. While demand for soybean oil will be less and less once packing oil stockpiles comes a end in the near one week, and then stock decline will be limited.

 

Unit: 10,000 tonnes

Area/Enterprise	Soybean oil stocks			Soybean oil in outstanding contracts
	Week 3	Week 2	Fluctuation	Week 3	Week 2	Fluctuation
Northeast China	4.95	5.95	-1	9.4	9.85	-0.45
North China	28.19	27.74	0.45	12.42	12.74	-0.32
Shandong	12.98	13.94	-0.96	8.26	8.79	-0.53
East China	49.52	49.3	0.22	25.65	27.62	-1.97
Guangdong	15.58	15.63	-0.05	14.5	17.34	-2.84
Guangxi	15	15.67	-0.67	15.52	13.52	2
Fujian	7.47	7.8	-0.33	3.8	4.8	-1
Henan	3.36	3.69	-0.33	1.67	1.91	-0.24
Sichuan	5.1	5.67	-0.57	3.13	3.28	-0.15
Others	10.72	10.67	0.05	1.77	1.75	0.02
Total	152.87	156.06	-3.19	96.12	101.6	-5.48

 

                               Figure: Comparison of domestic soybean oil stocks in recent years