According to Cofeed, in the week as of Nov 20, details of soybean oil inventories and outstanding contracts in main domestic regions are as follows:

Domestic crushers lower down operation rates this week (Nov 14-20), as they have to halt or reduce production under swelling meal inventories. Soybean crush at domestic mills totals 2,035,680 tonnes (meal 1,608,187 tonnes and oil 386,779 tonnes), down 84,400 tonnes or 3.98% from 2,120,080 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, operation rates (capacity utilization) are 58.14%, down 2.41% from 60.55% in the previous week. As mills have a plan for downtime due to ballooning meal stockpiles and toward the month end, soybean crush is expected to fall further to 2 mln tonnes and 1.98 mln tonnes in the next two weeks, respectively.

Soybean oil stocks continue reducing this week due to less output under lower soybean crush, but the decline is smaller than in previous weeks. In the week ending Nov 20, China’s soybean oil commercial inventories total 1,175,800 tonnes, down 3,300 tonnes by 0.28% from 1,179,100 tonnes last week, down 104,200 tonnes by 8.14% from 1,280,000 tonnes a month earlier, and up 90,000 tonnes by 8.29% from 1,085,800 tonnes of the corresponding period last year. And the five-year (2015-2019) average at the same period is 1,312,900 tonnes.

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