USDA predicts a decrease in demand for vegetable oils in China in 2025/26 MY

USDA experts have reduced the forecast for demand for vegetable edible oils in China in 2025/26 MY by 4.1% to 34.7 million tons, which will be 1.9% lower than the forecast for 2024/25 MY (35.36 million tons).
The September 26 report, "China: Oilseeds and Products Data Update," said that the main reasons for the decline in consumption forecast were a decrease in restaurant visits due to economic problems, an aging population, and the spread of a healthy lifestyle.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, in the first half of 2025, the country's GDP grew by 5.3%, and the catering industry's revenue reached 2.75 trillion yuan or $387 billion (+4.3% year-on-year). However, the monthly growth rate slowed to 0.9% in June. It is expected that the tightening of catering requirements will affect hotels, restaurants and institutions, which will reduce the consumption of vegetable oils.
According to the China Population Report, the country's population has been shrinking for the third consecutive year. In 2024, it decreased by 1.39 million people compared to the previous year, although the number of children born increased by 5.7% to 9.54 million, which was the first increase in the birth rate in the past 10 years.
If in 2020 the share of citizens aged 60 and over was 18.7% of the total population, then in 2024 it increased to 22%. And older people consume less oil and resist the trend of increasing consumption caused by urbanization and growth in GDP per capita.
The use of vegetable oils in animal feed in the 2025/26 MY will remain almost unchanged compared to the previous season and will amount to 1.3 million tons.
The decrease in overall consumption of vegetable oils, particularly palm oil, may also be due to a drop in export demand for used cooking oil (UCO), according to the USDA.
According to USDA data, vegetable oil imports in the 2024/25 MY decreased compared to the previous season from 9.7 to 6.4 million tons (with the largest number of deliveries of palm and sunflower oil), and in the 2025/26 MY may fall to 6 million tons.
The volume of vegetable oil imports is limited by weak consumption and sufficient domestic processing of oilseeds.