India's oilmeal exports fall 64% on low demand

India’s oilmeal exports have declined by 64 per cent to 231,817 tonnes in the first month of 2009-10, on account of reduced demand for soymeal.

“The oilmeal exports during April 2009 have drastically reduced to 231,817 tonnes compared to 646,592 tonnes in the year-ago period,” Mumbai-based Solvent Extractors’ Association (SEA) said in a statement.

The industry body pointed out that several Asian countries, which are major importers of Indian oilmeals, have faced crisis in their livestock industry resulting in lower consumption of soymeal.

The soymeal exports from India dipped to 100,106 tonnes during April this year from 539,175 tonnes in the year-ago period.

For the first time, rapeseed meal export from the country is higher than the quantity of soymeal shipped in a month. The rapeseed meal export stood at 102,187 tonnes last month as against 83,041 tonnes in the corresponding period of the previous year, SEA said.

It pointed out that volume of soymeal shipment has been continuously declining since January 2009.

The export was 521,243 tonnes in January this year. SEA also said that price of soymeal and other oilmeals have firmed up since January as global production could not be increased sufficiently. In fact, there is a drop of 15 million tonnes in the global supply of soybean, it said.

The free on board (FoB) price of soymeal has risen to $475 a tonne at Indian port from $368 a tonne in January 2009. Similarly, price of rapeseed meal has surged to $250 a tonne from $178. Groundnut meal price has jumped to $350 a tonne from $262 a tonne. Even the rate of rice bran extraction has increased to $135 a tonne from $121 a tonne.

Except China, all other importing countries have bought less quantity of oilmeals from India in April 2009. China had imported 58,445 tonnes of oilmeals that include 57,785 tonnes of rapeseed meal, while Vietnam took 61,882 tonnes, South Korea 30,660 tonnes, Japan 34,195 tonnes and Indonesia 16,568 tonnes.