Customs data shows that China total exports of Used cooking oil in 2023 to all destinations was just over 2 Mil MT with US use of Chinese exported UCO closer to 62% of total available exports when you include the 412Kt UCO exported to Singapore in addition to the 834kt shipped directly to US. You can conclude that US actually used 1.25 Mil MT of UCO for Renewable diesel in 2023 as the Singapore transformed product goes almost exclusively to the US and therefore use of this UCO comes as a direct substitute for vegetable oils. This substitution of vegetable oils by UCO from China in 2023 is significant as it represents nearly 10% of feedstock use in US. Considering operation capacity in the US estimated by EIA at 4.9Billion Gallons which is short of 16 Mil MT means that it is likely that US will bypass the EU as the largest Biodiesel/Renewable diesel market in the world and at current rate will probably absorb all the UCO exports from China leaving little available for Europe. This trend for now has dampened pressure on vegetable oil pricing which is now reflected in RINs prices. This pricing trend is also exacerbated by excess renewable diesel production in US above RFS mandated levels.
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