This week (August 31st-September 6th), for swelling soybean meal inventory and soybean shortages among some southern mills, the operation rate has declined as forecast. Soybean crush thereby totals 1,813,150 tonnes (meal 1,432,388 tonnes and oil 344,498 tonnes), a reduction of 87,250 tonnes by 4.59% from 1,900,400 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, the operation rate (capacity utilization) is 50.50%, down 2.69 percentage points from 53.19% last week. Soybean crush is expected to stay at a relatively high level of above 1.80 mln tonnes in coming two weeks, of which it will be at around 1.82 mln tonnes next week and 1.85 mln tonnes that following week. 

 

As of this week, soybean crush nationwide totals 79,253,665 tonnes in the crushing year of 2018/19 (from October, 2018), down 4,289,535 tonnes by 5.13% from 83,543,200 tonnes of the same period last year; in 2019 (from Jan. 1st, 2019), national soybean crush amounts to 56,102,265 tonnes, down 3,040,215 tonnes by 5.14% from 59,142,480 tonnes of the corresponding period in 2018, according to Cofeed. 

 

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

 

Details for weekly crush by region and by group are shown as follows: