Chinese crushers continue speeding up operation rates for soybeans this week (Jan 16-22, 2021) due to decent crush margins and as downstream buyers are taking delivery at a brisk pace. Soybean crush at domestic mills totals 2,107,620 tonnes (meal 1,665,020 tonnes and oil 400,448 tonnes), up 125640 tonnes or 6.3% from 1,981,980 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, operation rates (capacity utilization) are 59.43%, up 3.54% from 55.89% in the previous week. As operation rates will remain high in the next two weeks, soybean crush is forecast to stay at 2.1 mln tonnes next week but fall to 2.05 mln tonnes that following week with the coming of the Chinese Lunar New Year.

Soybean crush nationwide is estimated at 8.75 mln tonnes in January at current utilization rate, higher than the 8.4225 mln tonnes in the previous month and also higher than 5.913 mln tonnes of the corresponding period last year (Holidays for Chinese Lunar New Year last year were during the last ten days of January).

In the crop year of 2020/21 (from Oct 1st, 2020), China’s soybean crush totals 31,509,244 tonnes, up 3,634,444 tonnes or 13.04% from 27,874,800 tonnes a year earlier.

In the calendar year of 2021 (from Jan. 1st, 2021), China’s soybean crush amounts to 6,018,306 tonnes, up 177,149 tonnes or 3.03% from 5,841,157 tonnes of the corresponding period in 2020.

Fig.: Soybean Weekly Crush in China (2016-2021)

Details for weekly crush by region are shown as follows: