Unit: 0’000 tonne
This week, oil mills are highly motivated by healthy crush margins, so operation rate continues to rise, creating the highest weekly crush volume. And soybean oil posts an increasing output, making its stock expand further. As of Oct 26th, domestic soybean oil stock totals 1,857,700 tonnes, up 27,400 tonnes by 1.5% from 1,830,300 tonnes last week, up 176,500 tonnes by 10.5% from 1,681,200 tonnes month-on-month, and up 255,200 tonnes by 15.93% from 1,602,500 tonnes year-on-year. And the mean of the same period in recent five years is 1,389,900 tonnes.
This week (Oct 20th-26th), oil mills are highly motivated by healthy crush margins, so operation rate continues to rise, creating the highest weekly crush volume. Soybean crush volume in domestic refineries totals 2,015,400 tonnes (soybean meal 1,592,166 tonnes and soybean oil 382,926 tonnes), up 46,900 tonnes by 2.38% from 1,968,500 last week. The operation rate (capability utilization) is 57.54% this week, up by 1.34% from 56.20% last week. Due to the downtime for maintenance or lack of soybean in some mills toward the end of the month, the crush volume will decline slightly to around 1.87 Mln tonnes next week (Week 44), but will rise back to 2.0 Mln tonnes in Week 45.
Merely, some ships loaded with US soybean have been canceled gradually, so the import volume is forecast to fall gradually to 6.1 Mln tonnes, 6.0 Mln tonnes and 5.0 Mln tonne in November, December and January, respectively. This is far lower than that in the previous year, when the volume was 8.6842 Mln, 9.55 Mln and 8.48 Mln, correspondingly. Under such circumstances, the market needs being filled up by reserved soybean, but even so, there will still exist some gaps. And if the operation rate is affected later, soybean oil stock may see its turning points in late November or early December.