The Canadian canola crush slowed slightly in December but still topped 1 million tonnes for the third straight month.
A Statistics Canada crush report on Wednesday showed the December canola crush at 1.014 million tonnes, down just 0.4% from the previous month’s 1.019 million, although still 8.3% above the same month last year.
The 2024-25 marketing year high for the canola crush – at least so far - was reached in October at 1.101 million tonnes. The first and only other time the monthly crush exceeded 1 million tonnes was at the end of the 2023-24 marketing year, hitting 1.005 million in July 2024.
The cumulative 2024-25 crush (August-December) now stands at 4.919 million tonnes, up 7.6% from the same period last year.
In its December supply-demand estimates released last week, Agriculture Canada held its 2024-25 full year canola crush forecast steady from a month earlier at 11.5 million tonnes, up from last year’s record high of 11.03 million. In its first forecast for 2025-26, Ag Canada forecast the crush at a new high of 12 million tonnes, as the domestic processing industry “continues to expand.”
However, future capacity expansion took a major hit earlier this month when Federated Co-operative Limited (FCL) and AGT Food and Ingredients paused plans for a new processing plant in Regina that would have crushed 1.1 million tonnes annually. Ceres Global Ag previously also shelved its crush plant plans, announcing in June 2022 that it was suspending a new 1.1 million tonne capacity plant at Northgate SK.
The planned merger between Bunge and Viterra – which was just greenlighted by the Canadian government this month – has also sparked uncertainty about Viterra’s planned 2.5-million tonne capacity crush plant that was originally announced in April 2021.
On the other hand, Cargill said in July that its new canola crush plant in Regina was half complete and expected to be operational sometime later this year.
In 2021, Richardson International said it would double the capacity of its Yorkton, SK crush facility to 2.2 million tonnes, a project that is now up and running.
Louis Dreyfus Company announced in April 2023 that it was expanding its canola processing facility in Yorkton, SK. The project will double the company’s annual crush capacity to over 2 million tonnes, with work still ongoing.
Source : Syngenta.ca