This week (Sept. 14th-20th), the operation rate has gone up for slightly smaller soybean meal inventory, fair crush margins and higher demand as some downstream buyers are replenishing in advance for National Day holidays. Soybean crush at domestic mills totals 1,829,000 tonnes (meal 1,444,910 tonnes and oil 347,510 tonnes), an increase of 29,300 tonnes by 1.62% from 1,799,700 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, the operation rate (capacity utilization) is 50.55%, up 0.81 percentage points from 49.74% last week. Soybean crush is expected to be little changed next week and to sharply fall that following week due to the National Day holiday, of which it will be at around 1.83 mln tonnes and 1.36 mln tonnes, respectively.

 

Soybean crush nationwide is estimated at 7.61 mln tonnes in September at current utilization rate, slightly above the 7.57 mln tonnes in August yet below 7.97 mln tonnes of the corresponding period last year. 

 

As of this week, soybean crush nationwide totals 82,882,365 tonnes in the crushing year of 2018/19 (from October, 2018), down 4,456,235 tonnes by 5.10% from 87,338,600 tonnes of the same period last year; in 2019 (from Jan. 1st, 2019), national soybean crush amounts to 59,730,965 tonnes, down 3,206,915 tonnes by 5.09% from 62,937,880 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: