Chicago Board of Trade soyabean closed lower on Friday on profit-taking a day after the benchmark November contract set a one-month high, but still recorded a fourth straight weekly advance. CBOT November soyabeans settled down 7-1/4 cents at $9.68-3/4 per bushel on Friday. For the week, the contract rose 6-3/4 cents a bushel or 0.7 percent.

CBOT December soyameal settled down $1.70 at $311.40 per short ton and December soyaoil fell 0.27 cent at 34.81 cents per pound. The National Oilseed Processors Association said its members crushed 142.4 million bushels of soyabeans last month, the most for any August on record. Analysts on average had been expecting an August crush of 137.5 million bushels.

Market underpinned by export demand. The US Department of Agriculture said private exporters sold 132,000 tonnes of US soyabeans to China for delivery in the 2017/18 marketing year that began September 1. The announcement was the latest in a string of US soyabean sales this week. Private analytics firm Informa Economics projected US soyabean plantings falling to 89.057 million acres in 2018, down from 90.342 million in 2017, according to a client note. Informa put US 2017 soyabean production at 4.470 billion bushels, with a yield of 49.9 bushels per acre, up from its September 1 yield figure of 49.4 bpa.

Copyright Reuters, 2017