Taiwan to buy more soybeans from Brazil
Taiwan intends to increase purchases of soybeans from Brazil to save on freight costs amid a slump in its exports to the US. Taiwan is Asia’s third largest importer of soybeans.
According to Leon Chen, manager of business development at TTET Union Corp., the country’s biggest crusher of the oilseed, “Container traffic to the US has dropped.”
“Asia sent finished goods to the US and returned with containers of US soybeans, quite a special situation and one that will not be repeated,” he said.
Taiwan’s economy shrank at the fastest pace on record last quarter as a drop in exports and business investment pushed the island into its first recession since 2001, the statistics bureau said.
Taiwan may buy between 2 million and 2.1 million tonnes of soybeans this year, compared with 2.1 million last year, Chen said.
As much as 70% of the imports will arrive from Brazil and the rest from the US, a “reversal of the trend in recent years,” he said.
TTET Union, which crushes 1 million tonnes of soybeans into 800,000 tonnes of meal and 200,000 tonnes of oil, expects volumes to decline as much as 20% this year, Chen said.
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