After hitting a new high for the month in August, the Canadian canola crush did the same in September.
A Statistics Canada report Tuesday showed Canadian processors crushed 933,065 tonnes of canola last month. That was up 9.7% from the August crush of 850,529 tonnes and 1.2% above September 2023, which marked the previous high for the month. The all-time high for the crush was achieved in July 2024 at 1.005 million tonnes.
Through the first two months of the crop year (August-September), the cumulative 2024-25 crush now stands at 1.78 million tonnes, a 1.8% increase from the same two months of the 2023-24 crop year.
In its October supply-demand estimates released last week, Agriculture Canada held its 2024-25 full year canola crush forecast steady from a month earlier at 11.5 million tonnes, up from last year’s record high of 11.03 million. However, the government once again cautioned that its forecast is sensitive to the speed at which crush plants under construction become operational.
Amid increasing North American demand for renewable diesel, canola crush capacity in Canada is set to grow from the current approximately 11.2 million tonnes annually to just over 17 million over the next five years.
According to StatsCan, the September crush yielded 394,851 tonnes of canola oil, up from 363,165 in August and 390,460 in September 2023.
