According to Cofeed, in the week as of Dec 11, details of soybean oil inventories and outstanding contracts in main domestic regions are as follows:

Domestic crushers have elevated operation rates as expected this week (Dec 5-11), so soybean crush at domestic mills totals 1,950,780 tonnes (meal 1,541,116 tonnes and oil 370,648 tonnes), up 161,100 tonnes or 9.0% from 1,789,680 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, operation rates (capacity utilization) are 55.71%, up 4.6% from 51.11% in the previous week. Soybean crush will continue rising to 1.97 mln tonnes and 2.06 mln tonnes in the coming two weeks, respectively.

Soybean oil stocks keep declining albeit a pickup in soybean crush. Spot soybean oil market is in tightening supply and domestic consumer demand for packaging oils remains decent ahead of the holidays, whilst mills in Rizhao all suspended production last Friday due to the environmental protection. In the week ending Dec 11, China’s soybean oil commercial inventories total 1,036,150 tonnes, down 43,140 tonnes by 4% from 1,079,290 tonnes last week, down 143,850 tonnes by 12.19% from 1,180,000 tonnes a month earlier, and up 85,700 tonnes by 9.02% from 950,450 tonnes of the corresponding period last year. And the five-year (2015-2019) average at the same period is 1,257,200 tonnes.

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