This week (Dec. 29-Jan. 4th), operation rate has posted a sharp decline in soybean crush, for several oil mills have suspended or restricted their production after the shipment of soybean meal failed to keep up the stubbornly operation rate last week, in addition to machine maintenance in some mills. On this occasion, national soybean crush has come to 1,571,300 tonnes (meal 1,241,327 tonnes and oil 298,547 tonnes), a drop of 291,500 tonnes by 15.64% from 1,862,800 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, the operation rate (capacity utilization) has went down by 8.22 percentage points to 44.33% from 52.55% last week. Soybean crush will maintain at around 1.57 Mln tonnes as the stock pressure of soybean meal continues next week (week 2), and rise back to 1.75 Mln tonnes in week 3.

      So far, national soybean crush in 2018/2019 (as from Oct. 1st, 2018) totals 24,049,285 tonnes, down 1,554,113 tonnes by 6.06% from 25,603,398 tonnes of the same period last year. In 2018 (as from Jan. 1st, 2018), national soybean crush amounts to 88,590,264 tonnes, down 1,613,756 tonnes by 1.78% from 90,204,020 tonnes in 2017. 

      Fig.: Soybean Weekly Crush in China (2015-2019)

      Details for weekly crush are shown as follows: