Following a slight decline in operation rates this week (May 23-29), soybean crush at domestic mills totals 2,066,100 tonnes (meal 1,632,219 tonnes and oil 392,559 tonnes), down 31,400 tonnes or 1.4% from 2,097,500 tonnes in the previous week. Meanwhile, operation rates (capacity utilization) are 59.51%, down 0.9% from 60.41% in the previous week. Soybean crush will continue the decline next week to 1.98 mln tonnes due to soybean shortages and swelling soybean meal inventories, but it will pick up again to 2.04 mln tonnes that following week, according to Cofeed.
Soybean crush nationwide is estimated at 8.63 mln tonnes in May at current utilization rate, far above 5.7296 mln tonnes in the previous month and also above 7.8181 mln tonnes of the corresponding period last year.
As of this week, soybean crush nationwide totals 55,589,414 tonnes in the soybean crop year of 2019/20 (from October 1st, 2019), down 479,771 tonnes or 0.8% from 56,069,185 tonnes of the same period last year. In calendar year of 2020 (from Jan. 1st, 2020), national soybean crush amounts to 33,605,900 tonnes, up 688,115 tonnes or 2.09% from 32,917,785 tonnes of the corresponding period in 2019.
Fig.: Soybean Weekly Crush in China (2016-2020)
Details for weekly crush by region and by group are shown as follows:
