• Bloomberg reported that 7 cooking oil companies have been ordered by Indonesia’s competition commission to pay fines totalling IDR71.3bil (US$4.8mil) for limiting supply last year. The companies were found to have reduced production or sales volume of their packaged cooking oil after the government imposed a temporary price cap on domestic sales last year. The biggest fine was imposed on Salim Ivomas Pratama at IDR40.9bil. Other companies including units of Wilmar International, Multimas Nabati Asahan, and Sinar Alam Permai must pay fines between IDR1bil-IDR15bil.

• According to Bloomberg also, China has cut the use of soybean meal and corn in livestock feed in a drive to curb reliance on imports. The soybean meal ratio in most animal feed in April was 1.9%-point (pp) YoY lower than 12.5%, a year earlier. The corn ratio fell 1.3 pp to 36.6%. The decline came about as feed makers and hog farmers turned to less expensive wheat.

• Reuters reported that global grain trader, Viterra is in talks to merge with Bunge in a potential mega deal that would reshape top tier global grain merchants. A source said that there is no certainty that Viterra, which is partly owned by Glencore, will be able to reach an agreement on the terms. A merger with Viterra would lift Bunge with revenue of US$67.2bil in 2022, closer to its nearest publicly-traded agribusiness that would rival Archer Daniels Midland Co, which registered sales of US$102bil last year.

• Bloomberg quoted Fediol, which is a vegetable oil industry group, as saying that waste-based biofuel imports in Europe are happening at “such scale” that it may upset local rapeseed and rapeseed oil markets. Fediol said that the magnitude of the growth in biodiesel imports “raises questions” as to their authenticity as being derived from waste and calls for urgent investigation. Spot rapeseed prices have fallen by a third to EUR410/tonne in the past 5 months.

• Reuters reported that Indonesia plans to accelerate its replanting programme to double the areas covered between 2017 and 2022 to maintain production. Indonesia plans to replant 540,000ha of smallholder plantations by 2024F. At the programme’s launch in 2017, Indonesia aimed to replant 2.4mil ha by 2025F. However, as at February 2023, only around 278,000ha has been replanted. This year, Indonesia’s target is 180,000ha. The replanting programme needs support from banks. The government has only allocated a subsidy of IDR30mil or US$2,000/ha. A smallholders association estimated that replanting would cost IDR70mil per ha.

Source: AmInvest Research - 6 Jun 2023