Since operating rate is somewhat lowered in China’s oil mills this week (Mar. 17th-23rd), national soybean crush now amounts to 1,651,500 tonnes (1,312,942 tonnes of soybean meal, 297,270 tonnes of soybean oil), decreasing by 9.21% or 167,500 tonnes below from 1,819,000 tonnes last week. Meantime, soybean processing capacity utilization is down to 48.36%, 4.91 percentage points lower than 53.27% last week. Generally speaking, total soybean crush this week is downsized to be around 1.64 Mln tonnes, affected by a general machine halt due to machine overhauls, bloated soybean meal inventories and unavailable soybean supplies in some oil mills. Yet, soybean crush next week will again enhanced to 1.8 Mln tonnes or so. 

    Latest estimates for national soybean crush in March are 7.04 Mln tonnes according to current soybean processing capacity, higher than February’s 4.255 Mln tonnes and 6.5984 Mln tonnes the same month last year.

    Soybean crush in year 2017/2018 (as from 1 October 2017) has now amounted to 42,687,120 tonnes, 6.38% or 2,561,743 tonnes higher than 40,125,377 tonnes attained in year 2016/17. While soybean crush in year 2018 (as from 1 January 2018) has totaled 18,351,500 tonnes, a growth of 5.30% or 923,921 tonnes from 17,427,579 tonnes year on year.

                         Figure: Trends of Soybean Weekly Crush in China (2014-2018)