Oil millers are working to reach the peak crush in order to meet the festival demand, so operation rates continue an uptrend this week (Jan 23-29). Soybean crush at domestic mills totals 2,148,800 tonnes (meal 1,697,552 tonnes and oil 408,272 tonnes), up 41,180 tonnes or 1.95% from 2,107,620 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, operation rates (capacity utilization) are 60.59%, up 1.16% from 59.43% in the previous week. As operation rates will decline toward the end of the lunar year, soybean crush is predicted to stay at 2.05 mln tonnes next week and fall to 1.03 mln tonnes in week 6.

Soybean crush nationwide is estimated at 8.79 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 a year earlier. (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 33,658,044 tonnes, up 5,730,544 tonnes or 20.52% from 27,927,500 tonnes a year earlier.

In the calendar year of 2021 (from Jan. 1st, 2021), China’s soybean crush amounts to 8,167,106 tonnes, up 2,273,249 tonnes or 38.57% from 5,893,857 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: