Soybean crush continues rising this week (Sept 12-18) as millers seek to maintain high operation rates ahead of the Mid-autumn Festival and the National Day holidays. Soybean crush at domestic mills totals 2,183,650 tonnes (meal 1,725,084 tonnes and oil 414,894 tonnes), up 212,000 tonnes or 10.75% from 1,971,650 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, operation rates (capacity utilization) are 62.87%, up 6.11% from 56.76% in the previous week. Soybean crush is predicted to increase to around 2.19 mln tonnes next week and fall to 1.97 mln tonnes that following week due to the coming of the holidays. 

Soybean crush nationwide is estimated at 8.95 mln tonnes in September at current utilization rate, above 8.9128 mln tonnes in the previous month and also far above 7.5597 mln tonnes of the corresponding period last year.

As of this week, soybean crush nationwide totals 88,024,614 tonnes in the soybean crop year of 2019/20 (from Oct 1st, 2019), up 5,141,979 tonnes or 6.20% from 82,882,635 tonnes of the same period last year. In calendar year of 2020 (from Jan. 1st, 2020), national soybean crush amounts to 65,995,100 tonnes, up 6,263,865 tonnes or 10.49% from 59,731,235 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: