According to Cofeed, in the week as of Jan 29, details of soybean oil inventories and outstanding contracts in main domestic regions are as follows:

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 1.44 mln tonnes in week 6.

Soybean oil stocks notably slow down decline this week with higher soybean crush and as the festival replenishment of packaging oils draws to a close. In the week ending Jan 29, China’s soybean oil commercial inventories total 804,550 tonnes, down 11,150 tonnes by 1.37% from 815,700 tonnes last week, down 185,450 tonnes by 18.73% from 990,000 tonnes month on month, and down 45,450 tonnes by 5.35% from 850,000 tonnes year on year. And the five-year (2016-2020) average at the same period is 1,106,600 tonnes.

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