Ölsaaten News, 10/27/2023

Rapeseed was volatile this week. The bottom line is that the most traded February contract on Euronext/Matif yesterday was trading at roughly the same level as Friday last week. Compared to the last trading day in September, rapeseed is still weaker. The harvest in Canada is over. The harvest pressure is easing here and Canadian exports are more positive compared to the previous year due to the higher harvest volume. Overall, it is expected that the global harvest will be lower than in the previous year, and with constant consumption, the final stocks will shrink. In Australia, where the plants are in their vegetation, the weather prospects have recently improved significantly. After very dry weeks, there has recently been heavy rainfall, and more is forecast. However, due to a smaller acreage, production down under is likely to be lower than last year. Europe's imports of rapeseed remain noticeably below the previous year's values. By October 20th, 1.34 million tonnes of rapeseed had been imported into the EU. At this point in the previous year it was already 2.19 million tonnes. At 3.3 million tons, soybean imports are also behind the previous year's import volume of 3.44 million tons.Sunflowers and sunflower meal were imported significantly less. Soybean meal was also imported at 4.83 million tons, below the previous year's level of 4.93 million tons. Only rapeseed meal was imported slightly more than at the same time last year. Ukraine remains the most important supplier of rapeseed, ahead of Australia. The EU Commission had estimated that Europe will import just over 5 million tonnes of rapeseed this marketing year; last year, almost 7 million tonnes were imported into the EU-27. On the local cash markets, prices for rapeseed and rapeseed meal are weaker than last week, but in some cases rapeseed meal prices remain stable. Demand is assessed differently from region to region, but seems to have picked up again somewhat after the recent price setbacks at the beginning of October. Compound feed manufacturers such as oil mills appear to be well supplied until the end of the year. Over the past week, soybean prices on the CBoT have fallen. The rapid US harvest is a burden. However, this could stall significantly over the weekend due to a storm front forecast for the Corn Belt. Improved weather prospects in Brazil and Argentina are also having a negative impact.It has been very dry recently, particularly in Argentina and the more northern growing regions of Brazil, but heavy rainfall this week has noticeably improved growing and sowing conditions. However, positive export news provided a boost this week. On Thursday, the USDA was able to announce the sale of 110,000 tons of soybeans to a buyer from China in a flash sale. In general, there were a lot of export rumors this week. There is speculation that major Chinese buyers have signed letters of intent with EU retailers - but these reports have not been officially confirmed. US export sales were particularly solid this week. At 1.38 million tonnes, the average sales of the last few weeks were clearly exceeded. Soybean meal has recently benefited primarily from the significantly reduced soy processing figures in Argentina. The South American country is usually the largest supplier of soybean meal in the world, but due to the very poor last harvest, the processors have significantly too few beans available. Accordingly, US soy processors are hoping for increased demand on the global market and new sales opportunities.Unlike soybeans, soybean meal increased slightly over the week.