China has bought 20,000 tonnes of soyameal for December shipment and about 30,000 tonnes for this month from India due to higher domestic prices, traders said on Monday. The Indian soyameal was priced at between 2,600 and 2,800 yuan ($381.1-$410.4) per tonne, including freight, or about 13 percent higher than domestic meal, they said.

 

"We have bought some as the price offered earlier was profitable," said an executive with a trading house in Shandong. "But the price advantage disappeared following a large influx of cheap imported soyabeans this month." Soyameal, which is produced along with soyaoil when soyabeans are crushed, is mainly used as animal feed. Chinese crushers were expecting a 40 percent rise in soya imports this month as compared with last month, a total of more than 3 million tonnes, after a fall of the Chicago Board of Trade prices and collapse of freight rates.

 

The cheap imports put pressure on domestic soyameal prices, which now are almost as expensive as imported soyabeans, traders said. China, which has the world's largest soya crushing capacity, frequently buys soyameal from India when prices are cheap. It imported 118,819 tonnes in the first nine months of the year. China is a net exporter of soyameal, having exported 413,437 tonnes in the same period, mainly to Japan by Japanese-owned crushers in the country.