October 14, 2004

US NOPA Sept Soy Crush Seen Rising To 109.6 Million Bushels

Soybean crush rates for September in Thursday's National Oilseed Processors Association's monthly soybean crush report are expected to rise to about 109.6 million bushels from the previous report. This is due to the harvest of the new crop increasing soybean availability, according to a survey of industry analysts.

NOPA's report on September's soybean crush will be released Thursday at 0730 CT (1230 GMT).

In the previous NOPA report, crush for August was pegged at 96.5 million bushels. Estimates for crush in the September report ranged from 104.5 million to 113.3 million bushels.

Market analysts said the increase in crush from the previous month is a result of an increase of soybean supplies, particularly from the harvest of the early soybean crop in the southern US and the Mississippi Delta region.

"We weren't as tight as we thought," said Dale Gustafson, analyst for Citigroup Global Markets in Chicago.

Dan Basse, industry analyst at AgResource in Chicago, said the rising crush pace is a signal of a recovery in the industry from when crushing plants took downtime due to a lack of soybeans to process.

"The margins were good enough that as new-crop beans became available, we had some plants resume crushing that had went off line," Basse said. "It looks like we're in the recovery phase in crush demand."

Crush margins during the month of August bottomed out at 47 cents at the beginning of the month, but had recovered to a high of 63 cents around mid- August.

Meanwhile, NOPA soyoil stocks are seen at 915 million pounds, up from 868.6 million in the previous report. Estimates ranged from 766 million to as high as 1.211 billion.

The NOPA report includes figures only from processors that are members of the organization and consequently reports a smaller number than the US Census Bureau's crush report that follows later in the month.