New Delhi, Feb 16 (PTI) The country’s oilmeal export declined by 65 per cent year-on-year to 1.76 lakh tonnes in January this year, mainly due to fall in shipments of soyabean and rapeseed meal, industry body SEA said on Wednesday.
In January 2021, the country’s oilmeal export stood at 5.01 lakh tonnes.
During the April-January period of the current fiscal, overall export of oilmeal fell 35 per cent to 19.43 lakh tonnes, when compared with 29.69 lakh tonnes in the year-ago period.
Oilmeal is used as animal feed in poultry and other sectors.
According to the latest data released by the Solvent Extractors Association of India (SEA), export of soyabean extraction declined sharply to 52,771 tonnes in January of this year, from 2.83 lakh tonnes in the same month of the previous year.
“Currently, India is outpriced for soyabean meal export as ex-Kandla quoted at USD 785 per tonnes against Brazil origin USD 595 per tonnes and Argentina USD 575 per tonnes ex-Rotterdam,” it said.
Further, crushing margins of soyabean in India are also squeezed by pressure on meal prices and relatively high price expectation of farmers for soyabean seed, which is currently quoted over Rs 6,900 per quintal, it added.
Looking at the trend, SEA said, “India is unlikely to be competitive for export in the next two to three months due to the high price of domestic soybean seed. Lesser crushing of soybean is also pushing higher import of crude soybean oil into India.”
Since last year’s rapeseed crop was crushed heavily during the initial months of the season, the Association said, adding there is hardly any seed available now for the crushing. This has affected export of rapeseed meal in the last three months, it added.
The new crop is only available from the end of February or early of March for crushing, it said.
According to SEA, export of ricebran extraction is performing better due to larger demand from Vietnam and Bangladesh, while the performance of castormeal shipment is more or less same as last year.
Export of ricebran extraction declined to 72,738 tonnes in January this year, as against 89,776 tonnes in the year-ago period, castormeal export too declined to 35,142 tonnes, compared with 50,877 tonnes in the said period, it said.
Export of rapeseed extraction fell to 16,164 tonnes in January this year, as against 74,240 tonnes in the year-ago period.
Southeast Asian nations, the Middle East as well as European countries like Germany besides the US are the main export market for Indian oimeal.
