According to Cofeed, on the week as of December 13th, details of soybean oil inventories and outstanding contracts are as follows:

 

This week (Dec. 7-13), with a slight rise in operation rates, soybean crush at domestic mills totals 1,667,000 tonnes (meal 1,316,930 tonnes and oil 316,730 tonnes), up 14,400 tonnes, or 0.87%, from 1,652,600 tonnes in the previous week. Meanwhile, operation rates (capacity utilization) are 45.72%, up 0.40 percentage points from 45.32% in the previous week. Soybean crush is predicted to increase to around 1.77 mln tonnes next week and to 1.82 mln tonnes that following week. 

 

Soybean oil stocks continue to fall this week as mills have just slightly picked up operation rates while they have been in fair shipments. In the week as of Dec. 13th, China’s commercial inventory has totaled 950,450 tonnes, down 45,900 tonnes by 4.61% from 996,350 tonnes last week, down 191,550 tonnes by 16.77% from 1,142,000 tonnes last month, and down 755,050 tonnes by 44.27% from 1,705,500 tonnes of the corresponding period last year. And the five-year average at the same period is 1,249,300 tonnes. There is a total of 1,567,800 tonnes in soybean oil contracts to be fulfilled domestically, so soybean oil stocks will see a rundown in later period.

 

Fig.: China’s Soybean Oil Stocks in Recent Years