This week, almost all mills have halted for steam problems at port in Tianjin, and some mills, especially in Guangdong, Jiangsu and southwestern regions, have to cut down production or halt for their swelling soybean meal or oil inventories, so utilization rate continues to drop at a large pace. Soybean crush totals 1,412,800 tonnes (meal 1,116,112 tonnes and oil 268,432 tonnes), a reduction of 318,000 tonnes by 18.37% from 1,730,800 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, utilization rate (capacity utilization) is 39.54%, down by 8.9 percentage points from 48.44% last week. The crush is predicted to go up slightly to around 1.54 mln tonnes next week, and to around 1.62 mln tonnes the following week.
As of this week, soybean crush nationwide totals 64,509,915 tonnes, down 3,137,583 tonnes by 4.64% from 67,647,498 tonnes of the same period last year. In 2019 (as from Jan. 1st, 2019), national soybean crush amounts to?41,358,515 tonnes, down 1,888,263 tonnes by 4.36% from 43,246,778 tonnes of the corresponding period in 2018.
Fig.: Soybean Weekly Crush in China (2015-2019)
Details for weekly crush are shown as follows:
