This week (11th-17th Aug), operation rate in national cottonseed oil mills sees a small fall, mainly due to the temporary downtime in some Shandong oil mills. Among 136 oil mills surveyed by Cofeed, 11 oil mills are in operation (some are even not in full state). The stock of cottonseed crush volume in national oil mills amounts to 25,260 tonnes (cotton oil to 1,776.6 tonnes, cottonseed meal to 12,761.8 tonnes, cottonseed hull to 6,315 tonnes, and cotton linter to around 3,031.2 tonnes), down 540 tonnes from last week’s 12,761.8 tonnes by 2.09%; but it sees 15,160 tonnes above last year’s 10,100 tonnes at the same period by 150.1%. (Operation rate at the same period last year was relatively low, which was attributed to environmental protection inspection, limited raw material supply and down state of machines in most national mills, while this year’s cottonseed supply sees an increase over last year.) Operation rate in cottonseed oil mills this week is 7.10%, down by 0.15% from 7.25% last week, yet, up 4.26% over last year’s 2.84% at the same period. And operation rate in cottonseed oil mills is predicted to be still at around 7% next week.

    Fig.1: Cottonseed Operation Rate in China (2013-2018)

    Fig. 2: Cottonseed Crush Volume Weekly in China (2015-2018)