Brazil shipped 9.3 million tonnes of soybeans to China last month, the most in any month yet, the Financial Times reports, citing preliminary data collected by ship brokers Braemar ACM.

The newspaper quotes the lead dry cargo analyst for Braemar ACM, Nick Ristic, as saying: “China, for now, seems to be trying to satisfy all of its demand from Brazil. That’s what we saw last year [too]”.

The report says the Brazilian soybean harvest of about 125 million tonnes, the biggest yet, and the weakening of the Brazilian real against the US dollar have combined to make it about 23 percent cheaper for China to import soybeans from Brazil than to import them from the United States.

The high price of soy meal in China is making processing soybeans there profitable, fuelling Chinese demand for Brazilian soybeans, the Financial Times says, citing the Bunge trading house.