According to Cofeed, in the week as of Dec 18, details of soybean oil inventories and outstanding contracts in main domestic regions are as follows:

Oil mills across the country are trying to maintain production in order to meet strong demand for soybean oil, though some mills have limited the crushing in Shandong Province; hence, operation rates continue rising this week (Dec 12-18). Soybean crush at domestic mills totals 2,007,180 tonnes (meal 1,585,672 tonnes and oil 381,364 tonnes), up 56,400 tonnes or 2.89% from 1,950,780 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, operation rates (capacity utilization) are 57.33%, up 1.62% from 55.71% in the previous week. Soybean crush is predicted to be 1.95 mln tonnes and 2.08 mln tonnes in the coming two weeks, respectively.

Soybean oil stocks keep declining this week albeit a further pickup in soybean crush, but the decline is notably smaller. In the week ending Dec 18, China’s soybean oil commercial inventories total 1,020,700 tonnes, down 15,450 tonnes by 1.49% from 1,036,150 tonnes last week, down 157,300 tonnes by 13.35% from 1,178,000 tonnes a month earlier, and up 119,800 tonnes by 13.30% from 900,900 tonnes of the corresponding period last year. And the five-year (2015-2019) average at the same period is 1,213,800 tonnes.

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