According to Cofeed, in the week as of Oct 9, details of soybean oil inventories and outstanding contracts in main domestic regions are as follows:

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 spite of a sharp decline in soybean crush, many millers are not delivering soybean oil during the National Day holidays, so soybean oil stocks show a slight increase this week. In the week ending Oct 9, China’s soybean oil commercial inventories total 1,344,100 tonnes, up 7,610 tonnes by 0.57% from 1,336,490 tonnes in Week 39, up 71,100 tonnes by 5.58% from 1,273,000 tonnes a month earlier, and down 9,530 tonnes by 0.7% from 1,353,630 tonnes of the corresponding period last year. And the five-year (2015-2019) average at the same period is 1,387,500 tonnes.

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