China’s Nov corn imports hit record for a month, despite huge local crop

China logged record corn imports of 3.59 million metric tons in November, customs data showed on Monday, adding to a record domestic crop and further pressuring prices in the world’s no.2 grower.

November corn imports surged 384% from a year ago, coinciding with a record domestic corn production of 288.84 million tons this year, following a government push to raise the output of the staple grains for food security purposes.

The November import volumes were higher than expected, mainly because of quick loading from Brazil and some from Ukraine, said Rosa Wang, an analyst at Shanghai-based agro-consultancy JCI.

“Large arrivals of imported grains coming into southern China will squeeze the market share of Chinese local corn,” she said.

That means less domestic corn will be needed to be delivered to the south from China’s main corn-producing areas in the Northeast, and in turn hurting prices, Wang said.

China’s most-active May corn futures contract DCCcv1 on the Dalian Commodity Exchange fell 1.2% on Monday to 2,409 yuan ($337.79) per metric ton, its lowest in nearly seven months.

In the first 11 months of the year, China’s corn imports reached 22.18 million tons, up 12.3% from a year earlier, according to the General Administration of Customs data.

The increase is mainly due to a flood of arrivals from Brazil as buyers took advantage of cheaper prices from a bumper harvest in the South American nation.

The large crop and lower domestic prices will be a boon to Chinese livestock farmers who feed corn to the world’s biggest herd of pigs but have been losing money for most of the year.

Tags: corn, China, импорт