Operation rate for soybean crush continues to rise this week, yet lower than expected due to machine maintenance near the end of the month. According to Cofeed, soybean crush this week (Mar. 23rd-29th) totals 1,668,450 tonnes (meal 1,318,075 tonnes and oil 317,005 tonnes), an increment of 58,700 tonnes by 3.64% from 1,609,750 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, operation rate (capacity utilization) has gone up by 1.66 percentage points to 47.07% from 45.41% last week. As most oil mills will maintain their current operation or even power on all equipment next week, soybean crush will increase further to 1.67 Mln tonnes in week 14 and to 1.80 Mln tonnes the following week.
Soybean crush volume will total 7,090,000 tonnes in March at current operation rate, above 3,687,100 tonnes last month yet below 7,363,100 tonnes of the same period of last year.
As of this week, soybean crush nationwide totals 40,572,885 tonnes, down 3,645,063 tonnes by 8.24% from 44,217,948 tonnes of the same period last year. In 2019 (as from Jan. 1st, 2019), national soybean crush amounts to 17,421,485 tonnes, down 2,395,743 tonnes by 12.08% from 19,817,228 tonnes of the corresponding period in 2018.
Fig.: Soybean Weekly Crush in China (2015-2019)
Details for weekly crush are shown as follows:
