Nogger's Blog

30/01/13 -- Is it just me or is the market slowly coming around to the way of thinking that China needs more soybeans than you can shake a shitty stick at, and will pay up whether the price is USD14/bu or USD20/bu?

The Chinese also suddenly seem to have cottoned on to the notion that a record large Brazilian soybean crop is not much good if it's stuck on a truck in a 100km queue to get into Paranagua where a boat to take it to China is 124th in the line waiting to load.

In fact the only useful purpose that the record large Brazilian crop will have done is to temporarily drive the price down in North America so that the Chinese can buy some soybeans that they can physically get their hands on.

What are they going to do when they've had every last soybean for sale from the US 2012 crop and boats to load in South America are facing the currently estimated  (and conservative in my view) 45 day shipping delays come March time?

It's been in the news this week that Chinese traders expect to import more than 15 MMT, or 36% more soybeans in the second quarter of this year than in Q1. That number actually seems low compared to Oil World who have Q2 & Q3 imports at a combined 35.9 MMT - which is almost 1.4 MMT/week. That's a lot of kit when your only reliable supplier has gone fishing for six months.