As operation rate has continued to go up, soybean crush this week (Feb. 23rd-Mar. 1st) totals 1,677,600 tonnes (meal 1,325,304 tonnes and oil 318,744 tonnes), an increment of 111,200 tonnes by 7.09% from 1,566,400 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, operation rate (capacity utilization) has gone up by 3.14 percentage points to 47.33% from 44.19% last wee. Due to swelling inventory of soybean meal and inadequate soybean supply, soybean crush will fall to 1.55 Mln tonnes and 1.63 Mln tonnes in the next two weeks respectively.
Soybean crush volume is estimated to be 4,680,000 tonnes in February, below 7,12,000 tonnes last month but above 4,250,000 tonnes of the same period of last year, for the last Spring Festival was in the middle of February.
As of this week, soybean crush nationwide totals 34,197,085 tonnes, down 3,501,763 tonnes by 8.71% from 37,462,448 tonnes of the same period last year. In 2019 (as from Jan. 1st, 2019), national soybean crush amounts to 11,045,685 tonnes, down 2,016,043 tonnes by 15.43%% from 13,061,72 tonnes of the corresponding period in 2018.
Fig.: Soybean Weekly Crush in China (2015-2019)
Details for weekly crush are shown as follows:
