In spite of another pickup, the operation rate still remains low due to swelling soybean meal inventory in some mills this week (July 20th-26th). Soybean crush totals 1,567,600 tonnes (meal 1,238,404 tonnes and oil 297,844 tonnes), an increase of 62,000 tonnes by 4.11% from 1,505,600 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, utilization rate (capacity utilization) is 43.88%, up 1.74 percentage points from 42.14% last week. As the operation rate will continue to recover in the next two weeks for slightly eased swelling inventories with quicker deliveries, soybean crush is predicted to return to around 1.59 mln tonnes next week and to around 1.80 mln tonnes the following week. 

Soybean crush nationwide is estimated at 6.74 mln tonnes in July at current utilization rate, below the 7.40 mln tonnes in June and 7.55 mln tonnes a year earlier. 

As of this week, soybean crush nationwide totals 69,106,715 tonnes, down 3,530,833 tonnes by 4.86% from 72,637,548 tonnes of the same period last year. In 2019 (as from Jan. 1st, 2019), national soybean crush amounts to?45,955,315 tonnes, down 2,281,513 tonnes by 4.72% from 48,236,828 tonnes of the corresponding period in 2018. 

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

Details for weekly crush are shown as follows: