It is China’s National Day holidays this week (Oct 3-9), so operation rates have fallen to a low level. Specifically, soybean crush at domestic mills totals 1,387,550 tonnes (meal 1,096,165 tonnes and oil 263,635 tonnes), down 486,050 tonnes or 25.94% from 1,873,600 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, operation rates (capacity utilization) are 39.95%, down 13.99% from 53.94% in the previous week. As crushers gradually pick up operation rates after holidays, the crush is predicted to be 2.04 mln tonnes and 2.12 mln tonnes in the next two weeks, respectively.

In Week 40 (Sept 26-Oct 2), China’s soybean crush totals 1,873,600 tonnes (meal 1,480,144 tonnes and oil 355,984 tonnes), down 399,650 tonnes or 17.58% from 2,273,250 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, operation rates (capacity utilization) are 53.94%, down 10.51% from 64.45% in the previous week.

In the crop year of 2019/20 (from Oct 1st, 2019), China’s soybean crush totals 91,636,150 tonnes, up 6,443,065 tonnes or 7.56% from 85,193,085 tonnes of the same period last year.

In the crop year of 2020/21 (from Oct 1st, 2020), China’s soybean crush totals 1,922,814 tonnes, down 31,986 tonnes or 1.64% from 1,954,800 tonnes a year earlier.

In the calendar year of 2020 (from Jan. 1st, 2020), China’s soybean crush amounts to 71,529,500 tonnes, up 7,533,015 tonnes or 11.77% from 63,996,485 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: