Mato Grosso Jan bean crush up 21.87% yoy, but down on month

The January bean crush in Mato Grosso, Brazil’s biggest producing state, hit a total of 662,900 mt, up 21.87% from the 5-year average and the second highest recorded for the month of January.

However, this monthly total is down 2.35% compared to January last year and was down 2.89% from December 2017’s total, the weekly report by the state’s farm economics institute added.

January is seen as a transition month between harvests with many crush facilities opting to perform annual maintenance instead, which was the main cause in the monthly decline.

Harvested volumes tend to increase in February as harvest progresses, which could see a turnaround in monthly crush figures.

IMEA, however, warned that gross crush margins in Mato Grosso are still lower than the 5 years average which could hamper February’s final crush figure.

The soybean harvest progression in Mato Grosso continued a further 16.26 percentage points over the last week, hitting 44.96%, the weekly IMEA report added.

Mato Grosso produces around 30 million mt of soybeans a year, accounting for just over a quarter of national production.