An increasing number of mills have been forced to halt production by growing pressure from swelling soybean meal, so operation rates for soybean crush sharply decline this week (Nov 21st-27th). Soybean crush at domestic mills totals 1,843,280 tonnes (meal 1,456,191 tonnes and oil 350,223 tonnes), down 192,400 tonnes or 9.45% from 2,035,680 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, operation rates (capacity utilization) are 52.64%, down 5.5% from 58.14% in the previous week. Soybean crush will continue falling to 1.80 mln tonnes next week as it still takes time to digest ballooning meal inventories, but it will rise again to 1.95 mln tonnes that following week.

Soybean crush nationwide is estimated at 8.59 mln tonnes in November at current utilization rate, above than 8.3883 mln tonnes in the previous month and 7.1261 mln tonnes of the corresponding period last year.

In the crop year of 2020/21 (from Oct 1st, 2020), China’s soybean crush totals 16,396,464 tonnes, up 2,680,864 tonnes or 19.55% from 13,715,600 tonnes a year earlier.

In the calendar year of 2020 (from Jan. 1st, 2020), China’s soybean crush amounts to 86,003,150 tonnes, up 10,245,865 tonnes or 13.52% from 75,757,285 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: