China sent 310,000 tonnes of used cooking oil overseas in May, up 61% from the same month a year earlier, according to Fastmarkets. That is roughly 680 million pounds of waste oil leaving the country in thirty-one days.
For anyone working in this industry, the headline number matters less than what it signals. China is the largest UCO exporter in the world, and when its volumes swing this hard, the global balance of supply moves with it. More oil on the water means more feedstock chasing the same buyers, and that tends to show up in pricing long before it shows up in the news.
So the real question is where all of it lands. The United States led every buyer in May, pulling in 74,505 tonnes, with Europe and Asia taking most of the rest.
Destination | UCO imported from China (tonnes), May |
|---|---|
United States | 74,505 |
Netherlands | 51,404 |
Italy | 32,544 |
Canada | 32,500 |
Singapore | 31,118 |
Malaysia | 30,739 |
South Korea | 28,403 |
Thailand | 14,887 |
Romania | 4,801 |
Bulgaria | 4,000 |
India | 3,081 |
Chinese UCO has long flowed toward biofuel producers that need cheap, low-carbon feedstock, and a surge of this size puts more of that supply in play for the refiners and traders competing for it. A wave of imported oil can soften the market that domestic collectors and brokers are selling into, even if those barrels never touch their own region.
That is why this one matters across the board. Collectors and haulers feel it in the price they get paid. Traders and brokers feel it in the spreads they work. Processors feel it in what they pay to keep tanks full. A single export figure out of one country can quietly reset all of those conversations at once.
One month does not make a trend. But 61% is loud enough that it is worth watching where the next print goes.
