This week (Nov. 16th-22nd), due to handsome crush margins and continuous arrivals of soybeans at their factories, mills are active in picking up operation rates, so soybean crush has climbed higher than expected. The crush at domestic mills totals 1,770,700 tonnes (meal 1,398,853 tonnes and oil 336,433 tonnes), up 135,600 tonnes, or 8.29%, from 1,635,100 tonnes in the previous week. Meanwhile, operation rates (capacity utilization) reach 48.84%, up 3.74 percentage points from 45.10% in the previous week. Soybean crush is predicted to continue the growth to around 1.81 mln tonnes next week and to 1.84 mln tonnes that following week. 

 

Soybean crush nationwide is estimated at 7.27 mln tonnes in November at current utilization rate, above the 6.69 mln tonnes in October and also above 7.19 mln tonnes of the corresponding period last year.  

 

As of this week, soybean crush nationwide totals 11,940,250 tonnes in the crushing year of 2019/20 (from October 1st, 2019), down 2,008,335 tonnes, or 14.39%, from 13,948,585 tonnes of the same period last year. In 2019 (from Jan. 1st, 2019), national soybean crush amounts to 73,981,665 tonnes, down 5,396,715 tonnes, or 6.79%, from 79,378,380 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: