Some mills are in a lack of beans due to small soybean cargoes arriving at ports in February and March and some are facing swelling meal inventory (especially in Guangdong and Liaoning provinces), so operation rates fall as expected in China this week (Mar 6-12). Soybean crush at domestic mills totals 1,448,700 tonnes (meal 1,144,473 tonnes and oil 275,253 tonnes), down 232,800 tonnes or 13.84% from 1,681,500 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, operation rates (capacity utilization) are 40.85%, down 6.57% from 47.42% in the previous week. Soybean crush is expected to pick up slightly in the coming two weeks but still stay at a low level, to 1.50 mln tonnes next week and to 1.52 mln tonnes in week 12.

Soybean crush nationwide is estimated at 5.73 mln tonnes in March at current utilization rate, against the 4.682 mln tonnes in the previous month and 6.5783 mln tonnes a year earlier.

In the crop year of 2020/21 (from Oct 1st, 2020), China’s soybean crush totals 41,537,344 tonnes, up 4,380,344 tonnes or 11.79% from 37,157,000 tonnes a year earlier.

In the calendar year of 2021 (from Jan. 1st, 2021), China’s soybean crush amounts to 16,046,406 tonnes, up 923,049 tonnes or 6.1% from 15,123,357 tonnes of the corresponding period in 2020.

Fig.: Soybean Weekly Crush in China (2016-2020)

Details for weekly crush by region are shown as follows: