The group at Guangzhou Green Oil

Friday was an amazing day for us filled with lots of learning opportunities. In the morning we toured the Guangzhou Green Oil Industry’s crushing facilities. Their facilities were very impressive. Here’s a few of the key items we learned about the facility:

• Every day the crushing plant processes about 183,000 bushels of soybeans, which equals about 4,575 acres of soybeans.
• Currently, Guangzhou Oil Industry is expanding their crushing capacity. Once the expansion project is complete, it will more than double their crushing capacity, and the company would have the ability to crush every soybean grown in South Dakota in one year.
• The majority of the soybean oil from Guangzhou Oil Industry is sold in the Guandong provence, and most is used for human consumption.

Bob, Monica, Walt & Dave watch as the crushing plant unloads a barge of soybeans

Jeremy, Marc, Dave & Bob by the scoop that unloads the soybeans from the barge.

In the afternoon, we toured the Huangpu Port in the city of Guangzhou. While we were there we saw a Panamax ship transporting grain from Northern China come into the port. It was such a neat experience to see the size of a Panamax ship first-hand!

Matt & Walt stand in front of the grain bins at the Port

The Panamax come into the port hauling grain from Northern China

Jeremy & Sarah stand in front of the Panamax ship at the Port

Here are some interesting facts we learned at the port:

• A Panamax can transport up to 2.2 million bushels of soybeans.
• It would take 72 Panamax loads to transport South Dakota’s 2010 soybean crop.
• The Guangzhou Green Oil Industry Company receives a Panamax every 9 days to crush and process at their facility.
• The port has the capacity to store 11.8 million bushels of soybeans between their grain elevators and flat storage facilities.
• Because of our growing season, most US soybeans are shipped between October and March. China typically imports grain from South America April through September.