The 2009 Import and Export Market for Soybean Oil and Its Fractions in Latin America

On the demand side, exporters and strategic planners approaching the market in Latin America face a number of questions. Which countries are supplying soybean oil and its fractions to Latin America? What is the dollar value of these imports? How much do the imports of soybean oil and its fractions vary from one country to another in Latin America? Do exporters serving the market in Latin America have similar market shares across the importing countries? On the supply side, Latin America also sells to the international market of soybean oil and its fractions. Which countries in Latin America supply the most exports of soybean oil and its fractions? Which countries are buying their exports? What is the value of these exports and which countries are the largest buyers?

This report was created for strategic planners, international marketing executives and import/export managers who are concerned with the market for soybean oil and its fractions in Latin America. With the globalization of this market, managers can no longer be contented with a local view. Nor can managers be contented with out-of-date statistics that appear several years after the fact. I have developed a methodology, based on macroeconomic and trade models, to estimate the market for soybean oil and its fractions for those countries serving Latin America via exports or supplying from Latin America via imports. We do so for the current year based on a variety of key historical indicators and econometric models.

In what follows, Chapter 2 begins by summarizing where Latin America fits into the world market for imported and exported soybean oil and its fractions. The total level of imports and exports on a worldwide basis, and those for Latin America in particular, is based on a model which aggregates across over 150 key country markets and projects these to the current year. From there, each country represents a percent of the world market. This market is served from a number of competitive countries of origin. Based on both demand- and supply-side dynamics, market shares by country of origin are then calculated across each country market destination. These shares lead to a volume of import and export values for each country and are aggregated to regional and world totals. In doing so, we are able to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of both the value of each market and the shares that countries in Latin America are likely to receive this year. From these figures, rankings are calculated to allow managers to prioritize markets within Latin America. In this way, all the figures provided in this report are forecasts that can be combined with internal information for strategic planning purposes.