February 15, 2012

China fails to sell 300,000 tonnes reserve soy at auction

China was not able to sell out any of the reserve soy amounting to 300,000 tonnes it offered at an auction on Tuesday (Feb 14), according to the China National Grain and Oils Information Center.

This was the first reserve soy auction after the Spring Festival holiday (January 22-28). However, it still attracted no bidders as many processing mills preferred new soy for higher oil yield.

Meanwhile, the base auction price of RMB3,920/tonne (US$622.52) didn't have obvious advantage over purchase prices of about RMB4,000/tonne (US$635.22) in major producing areas.

The country has launched 28 batches of state soy reserves since December of 2010. However, the government only sold out 16,100 tonnes of the total 8.44 million tonnes of soy from reserves at those auctions.