USSEC conducted a soy trade mission in early April for a twenty member soy crushing and trading group hailing from four different Indian soy producing provinces.  The team was taken to potential soymeal utilization belts in order to demonstrate and re-emphasise the potential of soy use in India’s poultry and aquaculture sectors.  The mission’s objectives were to maximize proximity in the trade process and to inform soy crushers that the domestic industries are assured, sustainable business channels.  Collectively, the crushers’ group represented an installed crushing capacity of 24,000 metric tons (MT) of soybeans per day.  Currently, the crushing utilization is only about half that number, however, hovering around 12,000 MT/day.  On an annual basis, the group’s soy meal handling will translate to 1.68 million metric tons (MMT) if a 20-day operation/month on a 7-month window is considered.
USSEC’s India Feed/Meal team planned two days of activities for this group to visit a large layer farm with 2.1 million birds, two aqua feed mills with combined installed capacity of 0.5 million tons, one layer feed mill with a capacity of 90,000 MT per year, analytical/QC labs, and fish process plants, along with trips to a couple of shrimp, fish and layer farms.  The mission also had two mini trade sessions at sites focused on solving trade issues on the spot and one USSEC-conducted trade meet to discuss opportunities, new ideas and solutions.
The team was able to assess and discuss business one-on-one with buyers, understand supply and quality requirements of users, begin thinking about forward integration associations, assess future feed-soy opportunities, and discuss possible value additions on soy products, among other focused outcomes.  According to Dr. Vijay Anand, USSEC – India Feed/Meal Program Director, the timing of this facilitation, especially coming at a time when exports are low and domestic opportunities are at a high, was excellent.  He further stated that the mission increased compatibility between soy sellers and users by providing a better understanding of the entire value chain, beginning with soy crushing and culminating in animal protein production.