This week (Oct. 19th-25th), mills continue to pick up their operation rates for soybean crush. The crush at domestic mills totals 1,749,950 tonnes (meal 1,382,460 tonnes and oil 332,490 tonnes), up 22,150 tonnes, or 1.28%, from 1,727,800 tonnes in the previous week. Meanwhile, the operation rate (capacity utilization) is 48.27%, up 0.61 percentage points from 47.66% in the previous week. Soybean crush is predicted to decline slightly to around 1.67 mln tonnes next week due to soybean shortages, and to return to 1.77 mln tonnes that following week. Some soybean imports now are for state reserves, instead of for mills, so some mills may have to halt production due to a lack of soybeans late this month and early November.

 

Soybean crush nationwide is estimated at 6.85 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.  

 

As of this week, soybean crush nationwide totals 5,432,550 tonnes in the crushing year of 2019/20 (from October 1st, 2019), down 1,542,735 tonnes, or 22.11%, from 6,975,285 tonnes of the same period last year. In 2019 (from Jan. 1st, 2019), national soybean crush amounts to 67,473,965 tonnes, down 4,931,115 tonnes, or 6.81%, from 72,405,080 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: