Soybean Oil: export from Canada to ASEAN

Soybean oil is bought either crude for local refining or refined to a finished specification, and the choice should follow your own capability rather than the price differential. Toll refining an imported crude rarely survives the arithmetic at food-import volumes.

For refined oil the specification is colour, free fatty acid, peroxide value, flavour and oxidative stability. Stability is the parameter that matters disproportionately in a hot humid supply chain and the one most often left off an enquiry.

Format drives landed cost as much as the oil price: flexitank, ISO tank, drums and IBC totes carry different minimums and different terminal requirements. Confirm what your port and facility can receive before optimising the per-tonne number.

Canadian soybean oil comes off the Ontario and Quebec crop and crushing base, which generally means eastern port routing rather than Vancouver.

Crude and refined oil do not share a tariff line in most schedules, so the decision to import crude for local refining changes the duty position as well as the logistics. Confirm both forms before choosing between them.