The Egyptian GASC purchased 65.8 thousand tons of vegetable oils at a reduced price

The state-owned Egyptian operator GASC yesterday held a tender for the purchase of 40,000 tons of vegetable oils for delivery on January 10-31, 2023, where, thanks to the drop in world prices, it purchased 65,750 tons of oil at a much lower price than in previous auctions.

At the tender, where it was planned to purchase 30 thousand tons of soybean oil and 10 thousand tons of sunflower oil, 7 applications were submitted for the supply of sunflower oil in batches of 5.75-15 thousand tons at a price of $1406-1465/t C&F (at the end of October, the prices were 1425-1497 $/t) and 4 applications for deliveries of soybean oil in batches of 8-30 thousand tons at a price of $1,496-1,520/t C&F (at previous auctions it was offered at $1,600/t C&F).

As a result, GASC purchased 30,750 tons of sunflower oil at a price of $1,380/t C&F and 35,000 tons of soybean oil at a price of $1,475/t C&F for January delivery from Russia and Bulgaria. This price is significantly inferior to the price of previous tenders, where in early November GASC purchased 6,000 tons of sunflower oil for delivery in December at $1,474/t C&F, and at the end of October – 14,000 tons of soybean oil at a price of $1,600/t C&F, which is 20 % exceeded the trading price at the beginning of October.

The difference between the prices of contracts and offers indicates the willingness of sellers to lower the price in order to increase sales volumes, as the markets experience problems with the sale of products, especially against the background of another tightening of covid quarantines in China.

December palm oil futures on the Malaysian exchange fell 11.3% last week, but rose 3.9% since Monday to 4,004 ringgit/t, or $875/t, amid rising oil prices and the pace of Malaysian exports in November According to the survey company Societe Generale de Surveillance, Intertek Testing Services and AmSpec Agri Malaysia inspection, for the period of November 1-20, palm oil exports from Malaysia increased by 2.9-9.6%.

December soybean futures in Chicago fell 5.9% last week but rose 1.5% to $1,625/t since Monday.

Demand prices for Ukrainian sunflower oil decreased by $10-20/t to $1220-1230/t DAP for deliveries to Bulgarian ports, while for deliveries to Black Sea ports they remain at $1000-1050/t, but demand is very low because processors ship only their products and do not buy from other suppliers.

Thanks to the resumption of the work of the grain corridor, Ukraine increased its sunflower oil export by 9% to 175.5 thousand tons, of which China bought 109.71 thousand tons, and Romania 56.98 thousand tons. In total, 1.36 million tons of sunflower oil have already been exported in 2022/23 MR.