With huge soybean arrivals and on concerns over the storage in the scorching summer, oil mills are seeking to maintain high operation rates, which hit a weekly new high this week (June 13-19). Soybean crush at domestic mills totals 2,138,200 tonnes (meal 1,689,178 tonnes and oil 406,258 tonnes), up 86,200 tonnes or 4.20% from 2,052,000 tonnes in the previous week. Meanwhile, operation rates (capacity utilization) are 61.58%, up 2.48% from 59.10% in the previous week. Soybean crush is predicted to continue the uptrend to 2.15 mln tonnes and 2.17 mln tonnes in the next two weeks, respectively.

As of this week, soybean crush nationwide totals 61,711,164 tonnes in the soybean crop year of 2019/20 (from October 1st, 2019), up 344,579 tonnes or 0.56% from 61,366,585 tonnes of the same period last year. In calendar year of 2020 (from Jan. 1st, 2020), national soybean crush amounts to 39,727,650 tonnes, up 1,512,465 tonnes or 3.95% from 38,215,185 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: