Argentina's soybean crushing industry has a 45% idle capacity

The number is 4% higher than last year and only 2% lower than the highest point recorded, which occurred in 2018 due to the effect of a severe drought. A total of 38.4M tones out of an installed capacity of 70M tons (one of the largest in the world) are projected to be processed in 2020 according to the Chamber of the Oil Industry of the Argentine Republic (Ciara)

Since 2017 the industry´s idle capacity has not been able to go below 40%. 2018´s drought, which caused a low volume harvest )37.7M tons), was also worsen by a distortion of relative prices in the global market as a result of the "trade blockade" that China applied to US soybeans.

In order to promote crushing and reverse the situation, the Argentine government proposed a reduction in export tariffs for oil exports, but for the moment, it does not seem to have had the expected impact.