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Weekly soybean imports into the European Union amounted to 4,259 tonnes in the period to February 13, according to initial data from the European Commission released Tuesday.
The Commission said that data in the release was limited to February 13 rather than the week to February 18 due to “persisting technical issues.”
The issues included Irish data which was missing “as of June 2023,” Bulgarian data which was only available up to January 12, and missing Italian data for the first two weeks of February.
The biggest soybean importer over the period was Slovenia with 1,862 tonnes, followed by Germany with 641 tonnes and Belgium with 634 tonnes.
Total soybean imports for the current marketing year now stand at 7.2 million tonnes. Spain (1.9 million tonnes), the Netherlands (1.58 million tonnes), Germany (1.36 million tonnes), Italy (1.17 million tonnes), and Portugal (456,837 tonnes) have been the main importers since the marketing season began in July.
Soybean meal imports by countries of the economic bloc were 22,711 tonnes to February 13. France imported 13,442 tonnes of the total, Slovenia 4,225 tonnes and Germany 3,135 tonnes.
The cumulative volume since the beginning of the season, according to preliminary data, is 9.05 million tonnes. Poland (1.71 million tonnes), the Netherlands (1.21 million tonnes), France (1.12 million tonnes), Spain (1.02 million tonnes), and Germany (850,563 tonnes) were the top five importers of soybean meal since the start of the season.
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Rapeseed imports amounted to 23,467 tonnes in the period to February 13, pushing the total to 3.54 million tonnes.
Germany booked the lion’s share of this volume, taking 21,348 tonnes, followed by Greece with 1,500 tonnes and France with 546 tonnes.
The major importers of rapeseed since July were Belgium (891,866 tonnes), Germany (877,106 tonnes), France (656,167 tonnes), the Netherlands (501,671 tonnes) and Romania (131,323 tonnes), according to the Commission report.
Sunflower oil volumes to February 13 amounted to 5,162 tonnes, which brought the cumulative volume of imports since the beginning of the season to 1.45 million tonnes.
Spain (368,813 tonnes), Poland (304,124 tonnes), Italy (183,081 tonnes), the Netherlands (167,223 tonnes), and Bulgaria (145,830 tonnes) headed the top five importers since the start of the season.
Finally, imports of palm oil amounted to 1,111 tonnes during the week, with France importing the most at 584 tonnes.
This has taken total arrivals since the beginning of July to 2.06 million tonnes.
The main importers since the beginning of the current season were the Netherlands (622,512 tonnes), Italy (592,707 tonnes), Spain (385,709 tonnes), Germany (175,401 tonnes), and Sweden (84,773 tonnes).
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Commission import data can sometimes be incomplete and subject to revision as more data from member states becomes available.