News
25.09.2009
China's soyabean imports set to rise
China's soyabean imports are set to rise substantially in the next few years, an executive at commodity trader Noble Group said on Thursday. Jaime Teke, global head of structured finance at the firm, which this week agreed an $850 million equity investment from Chinese sovereign wealth fund CIC, said China had little room to increase its own soyabean crop.
"We don't see the conditions are right here in China," he told Reuters on the sidelines of the Latin America China Investors Forum in Beijing. "One of the big problems is irrigation. Definitely, imports of soyabeans from Brazil and Argentina will rise substantially. "China has no water. What we are doing essentially is importing water in the form of soyabeans and grains."
Noble has two soya crushing plants with 3 million tonnes of capacity in China, around 12 percent of the market, Teke said. Despite the deal with China Investment Corp, which now holds 14.5 percent of the trading company, Noble is not yet planning to expand its soya business in China, the world's biggest importer of the crop.
