Arrivals in March are, however, set to decline because
Brazil is still behind on shipments, said Wang.
(Reporting by Dominique Patton; Editing by Muralikumar
Anantharaman and Neil Fullick)
(Adds milestone, analyst comment)
By Dominique Patton
BEIJING, March 7 (Reuters) - China, the world's top
oilseed buyer, imported a record volume of soybeans for the
first two months of the year, as buyers stocked up in
anticipation of healthy demand and over worries of a delayed
harvest in Brazil.
January and February imports reached 16.17 million tonnes,
customs data showed on Tuesday, up 16.1% from a year earlier,
and the highest for the two months combined since at least 2008,
according to Reuters records of customs data.
China's General Administration of Customs combines data for
the first two months of the year to smooth out distortions
caused by the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, which fell this
year in late January.
China imported much lower volumes of soybeans in prior
decades making it unlikely that imports before 2008 were greater
than this year's level.
The imports were higher than expected and followed soft
imports through much of 2022, although they had surged in
December. February imports likely surged as crushers worried about a
delayed harvest in top supplier Brazil rushed to load more
soybeans from the second main supplier, the United States, said
Rosa Wang, analyst at Shanghai JC Intelligence.
Brazil's combined January and February soybean sales fell
31% year from a year earlier to an estimated 6 million tonnes,
consultancy AgRural said last week.
China's meat demand, and therefore the animal feed
ingredient soymeal, is expected to rise this year after Beijing
abandoned strict zero-COVID measures in late 2022.
The large volumes have pressured soymeal prices, said
traders, with the most active soymeal futures contract on the
Dalian Commodity Exchange down almost 5% in February.
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