Colombia bought 34 per cent more soybean grain in 2025 than it did in 2024. Pheonix puts that import pool at 1,420 thousand tonnes and USD 632 million for the year, rising to 2,760 thousand tonnes and USD 1.31 billion by 2033 — a volume CAGR of 8.7 per cent and a value CAGR of 9.5 per cent. Revenue per tonne moves only from USD 445 to USD 475 across the whole window. This is a tonnage market, not a price market.
The easy explanation for a 34 per cent year is restocking, and it is the wrong one. A restocking buyer adds tonnes because supply is long and prices are weak; the value of the pool rises against the volume. This one rose with it. What moved is the composition of the purchase: Colombia is shifting from importing soybean meal to importing whole beans and taking the oil leg at home, because the oil leg is where the crush margin has been made since biofuel demand reset the economics of the soybean complex. Whole beans carry the oil. Meal does not.
Four segmentation cuts set who wins in that shift. By end use, poultry feed takes 46 per cent of the pool — 653.2 thousand tonnes — with swine at 21 per cent, edible oils and refining at 17 per cent, dairy and beef at 9 per cent and aquafeed at 7 per cent. By origin the United States holds 34 per cent, Brazil 29 per cent, Argentina 17 per cent, Paraguay 13 per cent and Bolivia and others 7 per cent. By port, Buenaventura takes 41 per cent, Cartagena 23 per cent, Barranquilla 19 per cent and Santa Marta 9 per cent. By buyer, integrated protein producers take 38 per cent and independent mills 31 per cent — which is why toll-crush arrangements and least-cost formulation matter more here than brand.
The forecast's fault line is crush capacity, not demand. At the parent feed industry's own growth rate, with no further shift from meal to beans, the pool still reaches USD 864.9 million by 2033 — a real business that does not justify building extraction plants at the pace the largest processors are currently contemplating. At an accelerated build-out it reaches USD 1,621.6 million. The USD 757 million between those two numbers is decided by refinery and crush utilisation in the Cauca valley and around Cartagena, and by whether port and silo capacity at Buenaventura clears fast enough to keep imported beans cheaper than imported meal.
Two conditions would falsify this. If Colombia's imported bean volumes fall back toward 1,060 thousand tonnes while meal imports hold, the share-shift thesis is dead and the market is a feed-growth story at 4 per cent, not 8.7. And if export-origin regulation — deforestation-free sourcing requirements on South American soy — raises the delivered cost of Brazilian and Paraguayan beans relative to US beans by more than the oil leg is worth, the substitution reverses without any change in Colombian demand at all. Both are worth monitoring quarterly; neither is visible in an annual tonnage figure.
Basis of estimate: the growth path is anchored on the reported 34 per cent increase in 2025 imports. Absolute base values and all segmentation shares are Pheonix modelled estimates, not customs statistics, and are labelled as such in the body of the report.
" toc: "The market is moderately consolidated at the top and fragmented underneath. Five actors matter, and only two of them are Colombian-headquartered.
| Player | Position | Source of advantage |
|---|---|---|
| Bunge Global SA | Global origination and crush | Origination network across the Americas, port and crush assets, risk management |
| Cargill, Incorporated | Global origination, feed and protein | Integrated feed and animal-protein operations alongside trading |
| Team Foods | Colombian oils and fats | Consumer brand equity in cooking oil, refining capacity, retail distribution |
| Solla | Colombian animal nutrition | Feed formulation depth, national mill footprint, poultry and swine relationships |
| Italcol and integrated protein producers | Feed and own-crush | Captive demand; importing beans directly removes a margin layer |
The structural point is that the two global traders do not compete with the two Colombian processors for the same margin. Bunge and Cargill earn on origination, freight and risk transformation — they are the counterparty on the other side of the FOB contract, and their Colombian presence is a service to that book. Team Foods and Solla earn on formulation, brand and distribution. The line between the two models is moving, though, in one direction: when an integrated protein producer decides to import beans and toll-crush rather than buy finished meal, it takes the trader's spread and the crusher's spread in the same decision. That is the competitive event to watch in this market, and it does not show up in market-share tables.
Consolidation has already reshaped the supplier side. Bunge's completed combination with Viterra created a materially larger origination footprint across exactly the origins that supply Colombia — Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay — which narrows the number of counterparties able to offer a full-programme contract across multiple origins and grades. For a Colombian buyer, fewer full-programme sellers means less optionality on payment terms and freight allocation, even if the underlying commodity stays perfectly competitive on price.
Further reading: Global Animal Feed 2026–2033 and The Meat Merger That Was Really a Feed Order.
" value_chain_content: "The chain that turns a Brazilian or US bean into a Colombian chicken has six links, and the margin sits in a different place at each one.
| Stage | What happens | Where the margin is |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Origination | FOB purchase in the US Gulf, Santos, Paranaguá or Rosario | Basis, freight and the exporter's origination spread |
| 2. Ocean freight | Panamax and handymax parcels to Buenaventura or the Caribbean | Freight rates and Panama transit timing |
| 3. Discharge and storage | Port elevator, silo, truck or barge to the plant | Port capacity rent — the scarcest asset in the chain |
| 4. Crush | Solvent extraction into meal, crude oil and hulls | The crush spread; oil leg carries it |
| 5. Refining and feed milling | Oil degummed, bleached, deodorised; meal blended into ration | Refining premium on oil; formulation efficiency on feed |
| 6. Animal protein | Broiler, layer, pig, fish and dairy conversion | Feed conversion ratio and the retail price of protein |
Two features of that chain are specific to Colombia. First, the country's refining capacity is concentrated near the Caribbean coast and in the Cauca valley, while a large share of the poultry flock sits in Santander and Cundinamarca — so the internal freight leg between port, plant and farm is longer, relative to cargo value, than in Argentina or Brazil. Second, the crush spread is not the only thing the processor is managing; a domestic biodiesel blending mandate gives the oil leg an administered floor that meal can never match, which is precisely what makes importing beans more attractive than importing meal.
The ratio that matters most is the milk-to-bean relationship in the feed ration. Every point by which the price of soybean meal rises relative to corn pushes Colombian mills toward least-cost reformulation, substituting wheat, rice bran or distillers' grains and shaving the protein fraction. At 1,420 thousand tonnes, a one percentage point change in the national protein inclusion rate is worth roughly 14 thousand tonnes of beans. That sensitivity is why the segment's growth is not a straight line, and why the Latin America Animal Feed report is the best read-across for anyone modelling this market. See also Latin America Animal Feed 2026–2033 and Global Sunflower Seeds 2026–2033 for the substitution alternatives at either end of the crush.
Further reading: Feed Is 62.5 Per Cent of the Bill. That Is Why the Mill Cannot Raise Its Price.
" investment_activity_content: "Where the money is going in this market is crush, storage and port throughput — in that order of certainty, and in the reverse order of ease.
| Asset class | Investment direction | What it unlocks |
|---|---|---|
| Crush and extraction | Rising | Captures the oil leg domestically; converts bean imports into meal plus oil |
| Refining and biodiesel | Rising | Brand premium on edible oil; mandate-linked offtake |
| Port discharge and silo | Rising but slow | Discharge rate, demurrage avoidance, quality retention |
| Inland logistics | Constrained | Truck and barge capacity between port and feed belt |
| Feed mill automation | Moderate | Formulation flexibility, labour cost, traceability |
The arithmetic that governs all of it is simple. The pool adds USD 678 million of value between 2025 and 2033, and almost all of that increment is tonnage that has to be physically handled. A crush plant is worth building when its share of that tonnage clears the capital charge on 1,000 to 3,000 tonnes a day of extraction capacity plus downstream refining; it is not worth building on the 4 per cent scenario in which the pool never re-bases away from imported meal. That is why the investment case and the share-shift thesis are the same argument seen from two sides.
On the corporate side, two transactions define the current cycle. Bunge's combination with Viterra concentrated origination capacity across the South American origins that supply Colombia. And on the domestic side the Colombian oils and fats industry has been consolidating into larger refining groups with consumer brands attached — a consolidation that is fundamentally about owning the retail oil premium rather than about bean throughput. Neither transaction changes the tonnage. Both change who captures the margin on it.
Further reading: Latin America Animal Feed 2026–2033.
" technology_innovation_content: "Nothing in this market is technologically novel, and that is itself the finding. Solvent extraction with hexane is the incumbent process worldwide; mechanical pressing survives only in small regional plants where the cake commands a food premium. Colombia's technology question is not how to crush but where, and how fast cargo can be moved inland once it lands.
Downstream, extrusion is where the interesting product innovation sits — textured soy protein, high-moisture analogues, full-fat soy for aquafeed — but it is a small fraction of Colombian volume and should not be modelled as a growth driver for the bean pool. The strongest read on that boundary is Textured Soy Protein Is a Crush Story, Not a Burger Story, and the substitution threat at the far end of the protein fraction is covered in Global Insect Protein 2026–2033.
Further reading: Global Seed Market 2026–2033 — the upstream technology that sets South American bean cost of production.
" market_risk_content: "The forecast has one dominant sensitivity and several secondary ones, and it is worth separating them because they are routinely blurred into a single risk sentence.
| Scenario | Growth path to 2033 | 2033 market value | What has to be true |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feed-growth only | 4.0% a year | USD 864.9 m | No further shift from imported meal to imported beans; crush capacity unchanged |
| Base case | 9.5% a year | USD 1,310 m | Share shift continues gradually, plateauing before 2033 |
| Accelerated build-out | 12.5% a year | USD 1,621.6 m | Crush and refining capacity added ahead of demand; port clears |
The gap between the outer cases is USD 757 million on the same feed demand. That is the single most useful fact in this report: the market's upside is a capacity decision, not a consumption forecast.
Three observations would tell you the thesis is wrong before the market size does. First, Colombian bean imports falling back toward 1,060 thousand tonnes while meal imports hold — that would prove 2025 was a restock. Second, crush utilisation in the Cauca valley and around Cartagena failing to rise as tonnage rises — that would mean the beans are being re-exported or stored rather than converted. Third, the delivered premium on compliant South American beans widening beyond the value of the oil leg — that would reverse the substitution without any change in Colombian demand. None of the three is visible in an annual tonnage figure; all three are visible quarterly.
Further reading: Brazil Is 44 Per Cent of the Region and Mexico Buys Its Corn in Dollars and Black Soldier Fly Market 2026–2033.
" regulatory_landscape_content: "Regulation in this market does not set demand; it sets the delivered cost of a tonne and the speed at which it can land. Four regimes do the work.
Every soybean consignment enters under an import authorisation from ICA, Colombia's agricultural institute, tied to the pest-risk status of the origin and the processing establishment. This is the binding operational constraint on adding a new origin: the paperwork is not difficult, but the risk assessment is slow, and it is the reason a cheaper new supplier cannot be switched on inside a shipping cycle. Approval pathways in this market are compliance-driven rather than licence-based — the product is standard, the admission is not.
Colombia's tariff treatment of soybeans is the single largest determinant of origin share. Preferential access under the trade agreement with the United States is why US beans hold the largest single share of the pool despite Brazil's price leadership on a record crop. Andean Community arrangements and bilateral terms with Mercosur partners govern the rest. Colombia also operates an Andean price-band mechanism across a defined list of agricultural products; where a commodity sits inside that list, the effective duty moves with international reference prices, which is a form of protection that bites hardest exactly when world prices fall — the moment importers would otherwise buy most.
Soybean oil destined for human consumption is registered and inspected under INVIMA, Colombia's food and drug regulator. This matters to the crush economics rather than to the bean trade: a refiner selling branded cooking oil carries a compliance cost that a refiner selling only into biodiesel does not, and that difference is why the same tonne of crude oil can be worth materially different amounts to two buyers at the same port.
Colombia's biodiesel blending mandate is the administered floor under the oil leg, and therefore the mechanism that makes domestic crushing worth doing at all. Any change to the blend level resets the value of a crushed tonne without touching the feed side. Layered onto that is the external regime: deforestation-free sourcing requirements in export markets are pushing South American origins toward monitored, satellite-verified supply chains. Colombia is a buyer rather than a seller in this market, so those rules reach it as an input cost and an origin-selection criterion — a compliant Brazilian tonne costs more than a non-compliant one, and the premium is paid at the port of discharge.
Further reading: Global Glyphosate Market 2026–2033 — the crop-protection input whose regulation shapes South American cost of production, and Global Feed Phosphates 2026–2033 for the mineral side of the same regulatory perimeter.
" faq_question_1: "How large is Colombia's soybean grain market?" faq_answer_1: "Pheonix estimates the import pool at 1,420 thousand tonnes and USD 632 million in 2025, rising to 2,760 thousand tonnes and USD 1.31 billion by 2033 — a volume CAGR of 8.7 per cent and a value CAGR of 9.5 per cent. The base-year level is a modelled bottom-up estimate rather than a customs figure; the growth rate of 34 per cent for 2025 is the hard datum the model is anchored on." faq_question_2: "Why did Colombia's soybean imports rise 34 per cent in 2025?" faq_answer_2: "Because the composition of the purchase changed, not just the quantity. Whole beans carry the oil leg and soybean meal does not, and the oil leg has been the strong half of the crush spread since biofuel demand reset the economics of the soybean complex. Colombian processors importing beans and crushing domestically capture that leg at home rather than leaving it with the exporter — which is a share shift that does not fully revert." faq_question_3: "Who supplies Colombia's soybeans?" faq_answer_3: "On Pheonix estimates, the United States holds 34 per cent of 2025 volume, Brazil 29 per cent, Argentina 17 per cent, Paraguay 13 per cent and Bolivia and other origins 7 per cent. Preferential tariff access is why the United States holds the largest single share despite Brazil's price leadership on a record 180.4 million tonne 2025/26 crop." faq_question_4: "What decides whether the market reaches USD 1.3 billion or USD 865 million by 2033?" faq_answer_4: "Crush and refining capacity. At 4 per cent annual growth — feed demand only, with no further shift from imported meal to imported beans — the pool reaches USD 864.9 million by 2033. At 12.5 per cent, with capacity added ahead of demand, it reaches USD 1,621.6 million. The USD 757 million difference is a capital-allocation decision in the Cauca valley and around Cartagena, not a demand forecast." global_schema: organization: "@id": MIWS-root#organization "@type": Organization url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/" name: Pheonix Research website: "@id": MIWS-root "@type": WebSite url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/" name: Pheonix Research api: "@id": MIWS-root#api "@type": WebAPI url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/" graph: node_id: MIMR-node_817be2f graph_node_endpoint: "https://graph.pheonixresearch.com/api/v1/query/live/node/MIMR-node_817be2f" graph_snapshot: "https://graph.pheonixresearch.com/api/v1/read/live/graph" graph_exclusions: "https://graph.pheonixresearch.com/api/v1/read/live/exclusions" graph_meta: "https://graph.pheonixresearch.com/api/v1/read/live/meta" graph_bundle: "https://graph.pheonixresearch.com/api/v1/read/live/bundle" discovery: discovery_json: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/.well-known/pheonix-discovery.json" llms_txt: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/llms.txt" sitemap: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/sitemap.xml" --- # Colombia Soybean Grain Market Size, Share & Forecast 2026–2033 - **Market Size (Base Year):** USD 632 Million - **Forecast Value:** USD 1310 Million - **CAGR:** 9.54% - **Forecast Period:** 2026 - 2033 - **Coverage:** Country - Colombia Soybean Grain (Import and Crush) Market ## Executive Summary Colombia bought 34 per cent more soybean grain in 2025 than it did in 2024. Pheonix puts that import pool at 1,420 thousand tonnes and USD 632 million for the year, rising to 2,760 thousand tonnes and USD 1.31 billion by 2033 — a volume CAGR of 8.7 per cent and a value CAGR of 9.5 per cent. Revenue per tonne moves only from USD 445 to USD 475 across the whole window. This is a tonnage market, not a price market.The easy explanation for a 34 per cent year is restocking, and it is the wrong one. A restocking buyer adds tonnes because supply is long and prices are weak; the value of the pool rises against the volume. This one rose with it. What moved is the composition of the purchase: Colombia is shifting from importing soybean meal to importing whole beans and taking the oil leg at home, because the oil leg is where the crush margin has been made since biofuel demand reset the economics of the soybean complex. Whole beans carry the oil. Meal does not.Four segmentation cuts set who wins in that shift. By end use, poultry feed takes 46 per cent of the pool — 653.2 thousand tonnes — with swine at 21 per cent, edible oils and refining at 17 per cent, dairy and beef at 9 per cent and aquafeed at 7 per cent. By origin the United States holds 34 per cent, Brazil 29 per cent, Argentina 17 per cent, Paraguay 13 per cent and Bolivia and others 7 per cent. By port, Buenaventura takes 41 per cent, Cartagena 23 per cent, Barranquilla 19 per cent and Santa Marta 9 per cent. By buyer, integrated protein producers take 38 per cent and independent mills 31 per cent — which is why toll-crush arrangements and least-cost formulation matter more here than brand.The forecast's fault line is crush capacity, not demand. At the parent feed industry's own growth rate, with no further shift from meal to beans, the pool still reaches USD 864.9 million by 2033 — a real business that does not justify building extraction plants at the pace the largest processors are currently contemplating. At an accelerated build-out it reaches USD 1,621.6 million. The USD 757 million between those two numbers is decided by refinery and crush utilisation in the Cauca valley and around Cartagena, and by whether port and silo capacity at Buenaventura clears fast enough to keep imported beans cheaper than imported meal.Two conditions would falsify this. If Colombia's imported bean volumes fall back toward 1,060 thousand tonnes while meal imports hold, the share-shift thesis is dead and the market is a feed-growth story at 4 per cent, not 8.7. And if export-origin regulation — deforestation-free sourcing requirements on South American soy — raises the delivered cost of Brazilian and Paraguayan beans relative to US beans by more than the oil leg is worth, the substitution reverses without any change in Colombian demand at all. Both are worth monitoring quarterly; neither is visible in an annual tonnage figure.Basis of estimate: the growth path is anchored on the reported 34 per cent increase in 2025 imports. Absolute base values and all segmentation shares are Pheonix modelled estimates, not customs statistics, and are labelled as such in the body of the report. ## Market Report ## What this market is Colombia's soybean grain market is the value of the whole soybeans the country buys from abroad and converts — through crushing, refining and feed milling — into the protein behind its poultry, pork, dairy and aquaculture sectors, together with the cooking oil in its kitchens. Colombia grows only a small fraction of the soybean it consumes; the country's protein economy runs on imported beans and imported meal. Pheonix puts that import pool at **1,420 thousand tonnes in 2025**, worth **USD 632 million** at an average landed unit value of **USD 445 per tonne**. On the same model the pool reaches **2,760 thousand tonnes and USD 1.31 billion by 2033** — a volume CAGR of 8.7 per cent and a value CAGR of 9.5 per cent. Price contributes only a small part of that: revenue per tonne rises from USD 445 to USD 475 across the window, or 6.6 per cent over eight years, roughly 0.8 per cent a year. Almost all of the value created is tonnage, not price. ## The number that anchors this report In 2025 Colombia imported **34 per cent more soybean grain** than in 2024. Worked backwards through that growth rate, the 2024 pool was approximately **1,060 thousand tonnes**. The obvious reading is that 2025 was a restocking spike and that the line mean-reverts — and that reading is the one this report argues against, for a reason that shows up in the arithmetic rather than in the trade statistics. A spike year produces a jump in volume and a fall in unit value, because the marginal tonne is bought when supply is long and prices are weak. This one did something else. Colombia's soybean imports rose 34 per cent in a year in which the global bean complex was oversupplied by a record South American crop, and the value of the pool rose with the volume rather than against it. A buyer filling a warehouse behaves that way. A buyer switching the composition of what it buys — substituting imported beans for imported meal, and crushing them at home — also behaves that way, and keeps behaving that way. | Metric | | 2025 | | 2033 | | Basis | | Import volume | | 1,420 kt | | 2,760 kt | | 8.7% volume CAGR | | Market value | | USD 632 m | | USD 1,310 m | | 9.5% value CAGR | | Revenue per tonne | | USD 445 | | USD 475 | | +6.6% over the window | | Value created | | — | | +USD 678 m | | 2033 value less 2025 value | | Implied 2024 volume | | 1,060 kt | | — | | 1,420 ÷ 1.34 | ## Why 34 per cent is a share shift, not a spike Colombia's animal-protein economy is the largest in the northern Andes and the least self-sufficient in feed grain. The country's compound feed industry sits inside the 47.759 million tonnes Alltech's 2026 Agri-Food Outlook attributes to the residual of Latin American markets outside Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Ecuador — a bucket that runs from Colombia and Peru through Central America and the Caribbean. That regional tonnage is growing, but not at 34 per cent; the whole of Latin America fed only 5.5 million tonnes more in 2025 than in 2024, on a base of 204.4 million. Colombian soybean imports cannot be explained by Colombian feed demand alone. Something else moved the composition. What moved is the crush. Whole beans carry the oil leg; soybean meal does not. When the oil leg is valuable, a processor who imports beans captures it in Colombia rather than leaving it with the exporter. And the oil leg has been the strong half of the complex globally: throughout 2024–2025, soybean oil's value as a biofuel feedstock pulled crush margins in a way that meal demand never could, which is why US crush ran to a record 2.49 billion bushels for 2025/26 with oil, not meal, setting the marginal economics. A Colombian refiner facing a domestic biodiesel blend mandate and a cooking-oil market with real brand premium sees the same arithmetic an Iowa processor sees. Importing the bean is how you take the oil. That gives the 34 per cent a mechanism rather than a mood, and it also explains why the growth should not fully revert. Bean share rises while crush capacity and refining capacity are being added; it plateaus when they are built out. The forecast below assumes the plateau is reached gradually across the window rather than in 2026. The comparison that keeps the size in proportion: the same USDA Foreign Agricultural Service post reporting that carries Colombia's feed outlook puts Colombian **corn imports at 7.2 million tonnes in MY 2025/26**, against domestic corn production of 1.55 million tonnes. Soybean grain at 1,420 thousand tonnes is **19.7 per cent of the corn import tonnage**. Colombia is a feed-deficit country that buys its energy grain and its protein separately, on different contracts, from different origins, at different points on the price curve — and that separation is exactly why the protein side can re-base without the energy side moving. ## Market segmentation Four cuts matter for anyone selling into this market: who consumes the protein, where the bean comes from, which port it lands at, and who signs the purchase order. All shares below are Pheonix estimates for 2025, applied to the 1,420 thousand tonne pool. ### By end-use sector | Sector | | Share of 2025 pool | | Volume (kt) | | What sets its demand | | Poultry feed — broiler and layer | | 46% | | 653.2 | | Chicken and egg consumption, HPAI, feed conversion | | Swine feed | | 21% | | 298.2 | | Industrialisation of pig production, cold-chain growth | | Edible oils and food-industrial refining | | 17% | | 241.4 | | Cooking-oil demand, biodiesel blend, brand premium | | Dairy and beef feed | | 9% | | 127.8 | | Confinement, milk pricing, pasture substitution | | Aquafeed | | 7% | | 99.4 | | Tilapia and cachama farming, shrimp on the coasts | ### By product stream — the technical split of a crushed tonne | Product | | Yield per tonne of beans | | Destination | | Soybean meal / expeller | | 78% | | Compound feed mills, on-farm mixers | | Crude soybean oil | | 18% | | Refining for edible oil; biodiesel feedstock | | Hulls, loss and other | | 4% | | Fibre in ruminant rations | ### By origin | Origin | | Share of 2025 volume | | Why it holds that share | | United States | | 34% | | Duty-free access, phytosanitary continuity, Gulf and Atlantic load ports | | Brazil | | 29% | | Price leadership on a record 180.4 million tonne 2025/26 crop | | Argentina | | 17% | | Crush-derived meal and bean surplus, Paraná river logistics | | Paraguay | | 13% | | Landlocked surplus finding Atlantic exits | | Bolivia and other | | 7% | | Overland and short-sea supply, smaller parcels | ### By port of entry | Port | | Share of 2025 volume | | Constraint | | Buenaventura | | 41% | | Pacific access; road link to the Cauca valley and the interior | | Cartagena | | 23% | | Caribbean deepwater; crush and refinery cluster nearby | | Barranquilla | | 19% | | Magdalena river mouth; draft-limited | | Santa Marta | | 9% | | Bulk discharge serving the northern feed belt | | River, inland and overland | | 8% | | Border trade with Venezuela and Ecuador; river barging | ### By buyer type | Buyer | | Share of 2025 volume | | Purchasing behaviour | | Integrated poultry and pork producers | | 38% | | Direct import at scale, hedge on CBOT, own or toll crush | | Independent compound feed mills | | 31% | | Buy crushed meal or toll-crush; least-cost formulation switching | | Crushers and oil refiners | | 21% | | Import beans, sell meal and oil separately; margin is the oil leg | | Traders and distributors | | 10% | | Arbitrage, parcel size, working capital for smaller mills | ## Basis of estimate — read this before quoting a number The growth path in this report is anchored on one hard datum: the **34 per cent increase in Colombia's soybean grain imports in 2025**. The absolute base — 1,420 thousand tonnes at USD 445 per tonne — is a Pheonix bottom-up estimate built from feed-sector protein requirements, crush yields and landed unit values, not a line lifted from a customs series. The same is true of every percentage share in the segmentation tables above. They are modelled positions on a market whose published trade detail is thinner than its importance warrants, and they should be read as directional and internally consistent rather than as declarations. Two external anchors are used and are identified in the text where they appear: USDA Foreign Agricultural Service post reporting on Colombia's grain balance (corn imports 7.2 million tonnes, production 1.55 million tonnes, consumption 8.68 million tonnes for MY 2025/26, with Central Bank growth of 2.6 per cent in 2025 and 3.4 per cent in 2026), and Alltech's 2026 Agri-Food Outlook for regional feed tonnage (204.4 million tonnes across Latin America, up 5.5 million). Where a reader needs a customs-certified base rather than a modelled one, the segmentation is the part to replace first: the growth story survives a re-basing, the shares do not. ## Connected Pheonix research - Latin America Animal Feed Market Size, Share & Forecast 2026–2033 — the regional feed demand this import pool feeds into - Global Animal Feed Market 2026–2033 — mill economics and least-cost formulation at global scale - Global Sunflower Seeds Market 2026–2033 — the other oilseed Colombia's refiners can substitute into - Global Feed Phosphates Market 2026–2033 — the mineral half of the same ration - Global Seed Market 2026–2033 — the input side of the South American crop that supplies Colombia - Global Insect Protein Market 2026–2033 and Black Soldier Fly Market 2026–2033 — the substitution threat at the margin of the protein fraction - Global Glyphosate Market 2026–2033 — the crop-protection input that determines South American bean cost of production - Global Seaweed Extracts Biostimulant Market 2026–2033 — the crop-input side of the South American yield story that sets Colombian bean cost ## Table of Contents Value chain & crush economics Technology & logistics Competitive landscape Regulatory & policy Investment & capacity Market risks & scenarios ## Competitive Landscape Competitive landscape The market is moderately consolidated at the top and fragmented underneath. Five actors matter, and only two of them are Colombian-headquartered. Player Position Source of advantage Bunge Global SA Global origination and crush Origination network across the Americas, port and crush assets, risk management Cargill, Incorporated Global origination, feed and protein Integrated feed and animal-protein operations alongside trading Team Foods Colombian oils and fats Consumer brand equity in cooking oil, refining capacity, retail distribution Solla Colombian animal nutrition Feed formulation depth, national mill footprint, poultry and swine relationships Italcol and integrated protein producers Feed and own-crush Captive demand; importing beans directly removes a margin layer The structural point is that the two global traders do not compete with the two Colombian processors for the same margin. Bunge and Cargill earn on origination, freight and risk transformation — they are the counterparty on the other side of the FOB contract, and their Colombian presence is a service to that book. Team Foods and Solla earn on formulation, brand and distribution. The line between the two models is moving, though, in one direction: when an integrated protein producer decides to import beans and toll-crush rather than buy finished meal, it takes the trader’s spread and the crusher’s spread in the same decision. That is the competitive event to watch in this market, and it does not show up in market-share tables. Consolidation has already reshaped the supplier side. Bunge’s completed combination with Viterra created a materially larger origination footprint across exactly the origins that supply Colombia — Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay — which narrows the number of counterparties able to offer a full-programme contract across multiple origins and grades. For a Colombian buyer, fewer full-programme sellers means less optionality on payment terms and freight allocation, even if the underlying commodity stays perfectly competitive on price. Further reading: Global Animal Feed 2026–2033 and The Meat Merger That Was Really a Feed Order. - **Structure:** moderately_consolidated - **Tier 1 Players:** 5 - **Intensity:** high ## Value Chain Value chain and crush economics The chain that turns a Brazilian or US bean into a Colombian chicken has six links, and the margin sits in a different place at each one. Stage What happens Where the margin is 1. Origination FOB purchase in the US Gulf, Santos, Paranaguá or Rosario Basis, freight and the exporter’s origination spread 2. Ocean freight Panamax and handymax parcels to Buenaventura or the Caribbean Freight rates and Panama transit timing 3. Discharge and storage Port elevator, silo, truck or barge to the plant Port capacity rent — the scarcest asset in the chain 4. Crush Solvent extraction into meal, crude oil and hulls The crush spread; oil leg carries it 5. Refining and feed milling Oil degummed, bleached, deodorised; meal blended into ration Refining premium on oil; formulation efficiency on feed 6. Animal protein Broiler, layer, pig, fish and dairy conversion Feed conversion ratio and the retail price of protein Two features of that chain are specific to Colombia. First, the country’s refining capacity is concentrated near the Caribbean coast and in the Cauca valley, while a large share of the poultry flock sits in Santander and Cundinamarca — so the internal freight leg between port, plant and farm is longer, relative to cargo value, than in Argentina or Brazil. Second, the crush spread is not the only thing the processor is managing; a domestic biodiesel blending mandate gives the oil leg an administered floor that meal can never match, which is precisely what makes importing beans more attractive than importing meal. The ratio that matters most is the milk-to-bean relationship in the feed ration. Every point by which the price of soybean meal rises relative to corn pushes Colombian mills toward least-cost reformulation, substituting wheat, rice bran or distillers’ grains and shaving the protein fraction. At 1,420 thousand tonnes, a one percentage point change in the national protein inclusion rate is worth roughly 14 thousand tonnes of beans. That sensitivity is why the segment’s growth is not a straight line, and why the Latin America Animal Feed report is the best read-across for anyone modelling this market. See also Latin America Animal Feed 2026–2033 and Global Sunflower Seeds 2026–2033 for the substitution alternatives at either end of the crush. Further reading: Feed Is 62.5 Per Cent of the Bill. That Is Why the Mill Cannot Raise Its Price. - **Model:** hybrid - **Distribution:** distributor_led - **Supply Complexity:** high ## Investment Activity Investment and capacity Where the money is going in this market is crush, storage and port throughput — in that order of certainty, and in the reverse order of ease. Asset class Investment direction What it unlocks Crush and extraction Rising Captures the oil leg domestically; converts bean imports into meal plus oil Refining and biodiesel Rising Brand premium on edible oil; mandate-linked offtake Port discharge and silo Rising but slow Discharge rate, demurrage avoidance, quality retention Inland logistics Constrained Truck and barge capacity between port and feed belt Feed mill automation Moderate Formulation flexibility, labour cost, traceability The arithmetic that governs all of it is simple. The pool adds USD 678 million of value between 2025 and 2033, and almost all of that increment is tonnage that has to be physically handled. A crush plant is worth building when its share of that tonnage clears the capital charge on 1,000 to 3,000 tonnes a day of extraction capacity plus downstream refining; it is not worth building on the 4 per cent scenario in which the pool never re-bases away from imported meal. That is why the investment case and the share-shift thesis are the same argument seen from two sides. On the corporate side, two transactions define the current cycle. Bunge’s combination with Viterra concentrated origination capacity across the South American origins that supply Colombia. And on the domestic side the Colombian oils and fats industry has been consolidating into larger refining groups with consumer brands attached — a consolidation that is fundamentally about owning the retail oil premium rather than about bean throughput. Neither transaction changes the tonnage. Both change who captures the margin on it. Further reading: Latin America Animal Feed 2026–2033. - **Trend:** rising - **Capital Intensity:** medium - **Recent M&A:** yes ## Technology & Innovation Technology and logistics Nothing in this market is technologically novel, and that is itself the finding. Solvent extraction with hexane is the incumbent process worldwide; mechanical pressing survives only in small regional plants where the cake commands a food premium. Colombia’s technology question is not how to crush but where, and how fast cargo can be moved inland once it lands. The four decisions that actually move cost Extraction scale. A modern plant needs roughly 1,000 to 3,000 tonnes a day to earn its capital. Colombia’s bean pool of 1,420 thousand tonnes is enough to support a handful of plants at that scale and not many more — which is why the crush build-out question in this report is a question about utilisation, not about technology. Port discharge rate. Pneumatic unloaders versus grab cranes on a handymax is the difference between a two-day and a five-day discharge, and demurrage on a five-day overrun is a direct subtraction from the crush margin. Silo and aeration. Colombian humidity makes stored beans a quality risk within weeks. Storage that is not aerated converts a cheap purchase into a distressed sale. Least-cost formulation software. On the feed side, formulation is the technology. A mill running modern linear-programming software re-optimises the ration every time the meal-to-corn ratio moves; a mill running a fixed formula does not. Downstream, extrusion is where the interesting product innovation sits — textured soy protein, high-moisture analogues, full-fat soy for aquafeed — but it is a small fraction of Colombian volume and should not be modelled as a growth driver for the bean pool. The strongest read on that boundary is Textured Soy Protein Is a Crush Story, Not a Burger Story, and the substitution threat at the far end of the protein fraction is covered in Global Insect Protein 2026–2033. Further reading: Global Seed Market 2026–2033 — the upstream technology that sets South American bean cost of production. - **Innovation:** low - **Patent Activity:** low - **Maturity:** mature ## Market Risk Market risks and the three scenarios The forecast has one dominant sensitivity and several secondary ones, and it is worth separating them because they are routinely blurred into a single risk sentence. The scenario band Scenario Growth path to 2033 2033 market value What has to be true Feed-growth only 4.0% a year USD 864.9 m No further shift from imported meal to imported beans; crush capacity unchanged Base case 9.5% a year USD 1,310 m Share shift continues gradually, plateauing before 2033 Accelerated build-out 12.5% a year USD 1,621.6 m Crush and refining capacity added ahead of demand; port clears The gap between the outer cases is USD 757 million on the same feed demand. That is the single most useful fact in this report: the market’s upside is a capacity decision, not a consumption forecast. Four risks that can break the base case Origin concentration. The top two origins supply 63 per cent of the pool. A phytosanitary suspension, a freight disruption through Panama, or a tariff change on any one of them moves delivered cost immediately and cannot be offset inside a shipping cycle. Currency. Beans are priced in dollars and sold into pesos. A depreciation of the peso raises the local cost of the ration faster than it raises the price of chicken, and Colombian protein producers cannot pass it through at retail without losing volume. The 2025 layer segment already showed what margin pressure does to feed demand. Substitution in the ration. Corn at 7.2 million tonnes of imports against 1.42 million tonnes of beans sets the ratio the formulator watches. Wheat, rice bran and distillers’ grains can each take share from soybean meal at the margin; palm oil can take share from soybean oil in refining. Neither substitution is large in a normal year, and both are fast in an abnormal one. Animal disease. Salmonella pressure hit Colombia’s layer sector in 2025, alongside an avian influenza cycle that reshaped layer economics across the region. A disease event does not reduce the number of birds smoothly; it reduces them in a step, and feed tonnage follows within a quarter. The three falsifiers Three observations would tell you the thesis is wrong before the market size does. First, Colombian bean imports falling back toward 1,060 thousand tonnes while meal imports hold — that would prove 2025 was a restock. Second, crush utilisation in the Cauca valley and around Cartagena failing to rise as tonnage rises — that would mean the beans are being re-exported or stored rather than converted. Third, the delivered premium on compliant South American beans widening beyond the value of the oil leg — that would reverse the substitution without any change in Colombian demand. None of the three is visible in an annual tonnage figure; all three are visible quarterly. Further reading: Brazil Is 44 Per Cent of the Region and Mexico Buys Its Corn in Dollars and Black Soldier Fly Market 2026–2033. - **Overall Risk:** moderate - **Geopolitical Exposure:** high - **Substitution Risk:** moderate ## Regulatory Landscape Regulatory and policy landscape Regulation in this market does not set demand; it sets the delivered cost of a tonne and the speed at which it can land. Four regimes do the work. Phytosanitary admission Every soybean consignment enters under an import authorisation from ICA, Colombia’s agricultural institute, tied to the pest-risk status of the origin and the processing establishment. This is the binding operational constraint on adding a new origin: the paperwork is not difficult, but the risk assessment is slow, and it is the reason a cheaper new supplier cannot be switched on inside a shipping cycle. Approval pathways in this market are compliance-driven rather than licence-based — the product is standard, the admission is not. Tariff and trade agreement structure Colombia’s tariff treatment of soybeans is the single largest determinant of origin share. Preferential access under the trade agreement with the United States is why US beans hold the largest single share of the pool despite Brazil’s price leadership on a record crop. Andean Community arrangements and bilateral terms with Mercosur partners govern the rest. Colombia also operates an Andean price-band mechanism across a defined list of agricultural products; where a commodity sits inside that list, the effective duty moves with international reference prices, which is a form of protection that bites hardest exactly when world prices fall — the moment importers would otherwise buy most. Food safety and the oil leg Soybean oil destined for human consumption is registered and inspected under INVIMA, Colombia’s food and drug regulator. This matters to the crush economics rather than to the bean trade: a refiner selling branded cooking oil carries a compliance cost that a refiner selling only into biodiesel does not, and that difference is why the same tonne of crude oil can be worth materially different amounts to two buyers at the same port. Biofuel policy and origin traceability Colombia’s biodiesel blending mandate is the administered floor under the oil leg, and therefore the mechanism that makes domestic crushing worth doing at all. Any change to the blend level resets the value of a crushed tonne without touching the feed side. Layered onto that is the external regime: deforestation-free sourcing requirements in export markets are pushing South American origins toward monitored, satellite-verified supply chains. Colombia is a buyer rather than a seller in this market, so those rules reach it as an input cost and an origin-selection criterion — a compliant Brazilian tonne costs more than a non-compliant one, and the premium is paid at the port of discharge. Further reading: Global Glyphosate Market 2026–2033 — the crop-protection input whose regulation shapes South American cost of production, and Global Feed Phosphates 2026–2033 for the mineral side of the same regulatory perimeter. - **Complexity:** high - **Approval Pathway:** compliance_driven ## Frequently Asked Questions **Q: How large is Colombia's soybean grain market?** Pheonix estimates the import pool at 1,420 thousand tonnes and USD 632 million in 2025, rising to 2,760 thousand tonnes and USD 1.31 billion by 2033 — a volume CAGR of 8.7 per cent and a value CAGR of 9.5 per cent. The base-year level is a modelled bottom-up estimate rather than a customs figure; the growth rate of 34 per cent for 2025 is the hard datum the model is anchored on. **Q: Why did Colombia's soybean imports rise 34 per cent in 2025?** Because the composition of the purchase changed, not just the quantity. Whole beans carry the oil leg and soybean meal does not, and the oil leg has been the strong half of the crush spread since biofuel demand reset the economics of the soybean complex. Colombian processors importing beans and crushing domestically capture that leg at home rather than leaving it with the exporter — which is a share shift that does not fully revert. **Q: Who supplies Colombia's soybeans?** On Pheonix estimates, the United States holds 34 per cent of 2025 volume, Brazil 29 per cent, Argentina 17 per cent, Paraguay 13 per cent and Bolivia and other origins 7 per cent. Preferential tariff access is why the United States holds the largest single share despite Brazil's price leadership on a record 180.4 million tonne 2025/26 crop. **Q: What decides whether the market reaches USD 1.3 billion or USD 865 million by 2033?** Crush and refining capacity. At 4 per cent annual growth — feed demand only, with no further shift from imported meal to imported beans — the pool reaches USD 864.9 million by 2033. At 12.5 per cent, with capacity added ahead of demand, it reaches USD 1,621.6 million. The USD 757 million difference is a capital-allocation decision in the Cauca valley and around Cartagena, not a demand forecast.