Bottom Line: Last week, Brazil shipped 654,000 MT of soybeans. In comparison, the US exported 1.77 MMT. Brazil’s export commitments rose by 322,000 MT. Commitments are a record 67.46 MMT, up 30.0% from last year. USDA is projecting annual exports to rise 23.8%. Export commitments are at a pace that “on average” could exceed the USDA’s projection by 2.00-3.00 MMT. Commitments have now accounted for 104.6% of USDA’s projection of 64.535 MMT and there’s still 6-7 weeks left in the marketing year.
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On Dec 12, USDA lowered their projection of Brazil’s soybean local marketing year (Feb-Jan) exports by 0.5 MMT to 64.5 MMT. We had expected an increase. For the week Dec 09-Dec 15, Brazil exported 654,000 MT of soybeans. That’s greater than last week’s 390,000 MT and more than three times the 190,000 MT that were shipped a year ago. Brazil’s soybean export “commitments” (shipments to date, vessels loading or waiting, and vessels to arrive) were estimated to be 67.46 MMT, 322,000 MT more than week ago. This is a record for this date and 15.5 MMT more than a year ago (see chart below). It is also 104.6% of the USDA’s projection for annual exports.
Based on the ship lineup as of Dec 15, Brazil’s December soybean shipments are projected to be 2.60 MMT. That compares to last year’s December shipments of 0.721 MMT (and SECEX’s official December ’16 exports of 0.653 MMT). SECEX’S “official” exports for November 2017 was 2.14 MMT vs shipments reported by shipping services of 2.16 MMT. There was 1 ship in the lineup scheduled to leave January.
The chart below shows the seasonal of weekly export commitments for 2017/18 (red squares) vs last year (green triangles). Export commitments are more than one standard deviation above the “average” pace (black line) needed to meet the USDA’s export projection for a record 65.635 MMT. USDA’s local marketing year for Brazil’s soybean crop begins Feb 1. Commitments have now accounted for 104.6% of USDA’s projection of 64.5 MMT and there’s still 6-7 weeks left in the marketing year.
The chart below shows the seasonal of this year’s Brazil monthly soybean exports as measured by shipments (black circles) and SECEX (red diamonds). Also shown (as green squares) are last year’s SECEX exports. The 5-year average of monthly exports (measured as a percent of annual exports) is depicted by the solid blue line (read off the left axis).
