This week (Nov. 17th-23rd), operation rate for soybean has dropped for swollen soybean meal inventories under slow shipment and soybean shortage in some refineries. The crush volume of soybean in oil mills nationwide totals 1,694,800 tonnes (meal 1,338,892 tonnes and oil 322,012 tonnes), down 21,200 tonnes by 1.23% from 1,716,000 tonnes last week. The operation rate (capability utilization) is 48.38%, down by 0.61% from 48.99% last week. The crush volume will maintain at 1.70 Mln tonnes next week (week 48), but will rise back to 1.73 Mln tonnes in week 49.

      Calculated by current operation rate, soybean crush volume in November is forecast to total 7.36 Mln tonnes, far lower than last month’s 8.27 Mln tonnes and lower than last year’s 7.57 Mln tonnes of the corresponding period. 

      So far, domestic soybean crush volume in 2018/2019 (dating from Oct 1st, 2018) totals 13,948,585 tonnes, down 70,613 tonnes by 0.50% from 14,019,198 tonnes a year earlier. In 2018 (dating from Jan 1st, 2018), domestic soybean crush volume amounts to 79,387,450 tonnes, down 435,049 tonnes by 0.54% from 79,822,499 tonnes of the same period in 2017. 

      Fig.:Soybean Weekly Crush in China  (2014-2018)

      Details for weekly crush are shown as follows: