Export of oilmeals in May dropped drastically by 64% to 1.78 lakh tonne compared to 4.92 lakh tonne during the same period last year, because of steady decrease in production of meat and partly due to reduction in demand for compound feeds and oilmeals.

The overall export of oilmeals declined to 4.17 lakh tonne during the first two months of the current financial year, April and May 2009, from 11.39 lakh tonne for the same period of last year. ?Several Asian countries have suffered from a crisis in the livestock industry, which has contributed to lower consumption of soya meal and other oilmeals, reflecting in lower export from India,? BV Mehta, executive director of The Solvent Extractors? Association of India (SEA) said.

He also said that since January 2009, export of oilmeals was declining continuously due to steady decrease in production of meat and reduced demand for compound feeds and oilmeals.

World production of soyabean meal is expected to fall by 6.8 million tonne(mt) or 4% in 2008-09. The tightness in soya meal supplies are major bullish factors for oilmeals.

The disastrous soyabean production in Argentina only at 32.7 million tonne from last year 46.2 million tonne coupled with lesser production of soybean below potential in Brazil, Paraguay and other South American countries will have major consequence for the remainder of the season as well as for the first half of the world crop season 2009-10.

Soybean crop failure in South America and resulting sharp decline in world supplies of soybean by 22 million tonnes during current season, production of soybean and other oilmeals could not be increased sufficiently as a result price of soybean and other oilmeals have firmed up, since January 2009.

Among the major buyers of oilmeals from India , China bought 90,754 tonne of oilmeals during the last two months mainly consisting of rapeseed meal of 90,094 tonne and small quantity of soybean meal.

However, export to Vietnam greatly reduced to 1.15 lakh tonne from 3.38 lakh tonnes over the same period last year. Similarly, export to South Korea, Japan, Indonesia and Thailand has also reduced.

SEA delegation just returned from South East Asian Countries has observed that the demand which was reduced in last few months has started rising now and is expected to pick up in coming months with revival of global economy.