Operation rates continue picking up as expected this week (Apr 17-23). Soybean crush at domestic mills totals 1,779,000 tonnes (meal 1,405,410 tonnes and oil 338,010 tonnes), up 162,000 tonnes or 10.01% from 1,617,000 tonnes last week. Meanwhile, operation rates (capacity utilization) are 50.17%, up 4.57% from 45.60% in the previous week. Soybean crush is expected to increase to 1.86 mln tonnes next week, but will fall to 1.80 mln tonnes in week 18 due to May Day holidays and as many soybean crushers in Rizhao, Shandong Province, will be in downtime when steam supply will be affected by the maintenance of power plants.

Soybean crush nationwide is estimated at 7.05 mln tonnes in April at current utilization rate, against the 6.8288 mln tonnes in the previous month and 6.7296 mln tonnes a year earlier.

In the crop year of 2020/21 (from Oct 1st, 2020), China’s soybean crush totals 50,898,334 tonnes, up 4,826,334 tonnes or 10.48% from 46,072,000 tonnes a year earlier.

In the calendar year of 2021 (from Jan. 1st, 2021), China’s soybean crush amounts to 25,407,396 tonnes, up 1,369,039 tonnes or 5.70% from 24,038,357 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: