AgroPages-Argentine oilseed industry closer to start selling soybean meal to China-Agricultural news

Photo: Mounted alongside the Paraná River, the Renova plant has 30,000 daily tons of crushing capacity

August 27th. A Chinese mission is currently inspecting soybean meal factories in Argentina, to approve them for exporting the byproduct to the Asian country.

Argentina is the largest world soybean meal exporter, with more than 65 million metric tons of crushing capacity. Along the Parana river, global and local oilseed companies mounted their processing plants and ports. During 2016 the crushing industry reached a processing record of about 44 million metric tons of soybean.

This year, after recovering from the drought which affected the 2017/18 campaign, the industry crushed 4.4 MMT in July, and it’s so probable that reach a new processing record this year.

“If Argentina achieves to export soybean meal to China, clearly it will be thanks to our insistence”, the chairman of CIARA (the local oilseed industry chamber), Gustavo Idigoras, told to eFarmNewsAr.com.

The trade war between the US and China and the pork African fever is hitting the trade policy of the Asian country. First of all, they are focusing on the purchasing of soybean in Mercosur, where Brazil produces more than 100 MMT and Argentina another 55 MMT, replacing their purchases from the US.

“Even though pork meat production will drop dramatically this year, they said to us that poultry industry will offset this lower production and we think that their feed demand will remain the same”, Idigoras opined.

The official added that China buys minor volumes of soybean meal, just from India, Pakistan and other Asian countries. The Chinese feed industry would be the costumers of the Argentine soybean meal, but “only if their Government greenlights the purchases”, Idigoras thinks.

The Chinese mission that is inspecting the factories is the last step before the Governmental approve. Next September, a public-private Argentine mission will return to China to accelerate the approval by the Chinese authorities. It will be a key mission.

If everything goes well, Argentine soybean meal export to China could start between December to March 2020.