This week (Oct. 12th-18th), mills continue to pick up their operation rates for soybean crush. Soybean crush at domestic mills totals 1,727,800 tonnes (meal 1,364,962 tonnes and oil 328,282 tonnes), up 433,400 tonnes, or 33.49%, from 1,294,400 tonnes in the previous week. Meanwhile, the operation rate (capacity utilization) is 47.66%, up 11.96 percentage points from 35.70% in the previous week. Soybean crush is predicted to continue the upward trend in the coming two weeks, to 1.75 mln tonnes next week and 1.85 mln tonnes that following week.
Soybean crush nationwide is estimated at 7.01 mln tonnes in October at current utilization rate, below the 7.55 mln tonnes in September and also below 8.26 mln tonnes of the corresponding period last year, according to Cofeed.
As of this week, soybean crush nationwide totals 3,682,600 tonnes in the crushing year of 2019/20 (from October 1st, 2019), down 1,277,285 tonnes, or 25.75%, from 4,959,885 tonnes of the same period last year. In 2019 (from Jan. 1st, 2019), national soybean crush amounts to 65,724,015 tonnes, down 4,665,665 tonnes, or 6.62%, from 70,389,680 tonnes of the corresponding period in 2018.
Fig.: Soybean Weekly Crush in China (2015-2019)
Details for weekly crush by region and by group are shown as follows:
