China imported a record volume of oilseeds in 2022/23 MY

Despite some slowdown of oilseeds imports by China in September this year to 7.8 mln tonnes, according to the experts of Oil Word (Germany), in 2022/23 MY (October-September) the imports reached the record 109.9 mln tonnes.

As specified, the sharp increase of soybean imports – up to 100.87 mln tonnes in 2022/23 MY against 91.6 mln tonnes in the previous MY, as well as canola and rapeseed – up to 5.33 (1.66) mln tonnes, respectively, was partially used to increase domestic stocks, which may lead to the slowdown of oilseeds imports at the beginning of 2023/24 MY.

Moreover, to meet the domestic demand from the livestock sector, China also increased the imports of oilseed meals by 1.3 mln tonnes (or +18%) in 2022/23 MY compared to the previous season, to 8.4 mln tonnes. The higher imports of oilseed meals were despite the significant increase in domestic processing. In particular, soybean processing increased by 0.3 mln tonnes to a record 95.1 mln tonnes.

In particular, imports of sunflower meal increased by 1 million tons per year to 2.96 million tons, including 2.1 million tons from Ukraine, 0.3 million tons from Russia, and 0.5 million tons from Bulgaria. Imports of palm kernel meal increased by 0.6 million tons to a new high of 1.45 million tons, while purchases of rapeseed meal decreased.

As for the imports of oils, experts estimate the imports of palm oil in 2022/23 MY at 6.9 mln tonnes, compared to 4.8 mln tonnes in the previous season, rapeseed oil – 1.9 (0.9) mln tonnes, and sunflower oil – 1.5 (0.5) mln tonnes. The total imports of vegetable oils in 2022/23 season amounted to 12.7 mln tonnes, compared to 8.2 mln tonnes in 2021/22 MY.

Tags: soybean oil, soybean, rapeseed, imports, sunflower meal, Ukraine, China, sunflower oil