Refined Soybean Oil

RBD & winterised soya oil from Argentina & Brazil

Refined soybean oil is contracted on FFA as oleic at ≤ 0.1%, moisture and impurities ≤ 0.1%, peroxide value ≤ 5 meq/kg at loading, Lovibond colour ≤ 2.0 red / ≤ 20 yellow in a 5¼-inch cell, and an iodine value of 120–143. The two figures worth reading carefully are colour and peroxide. Soybean oil is naturally greener and darker in the crude than sunflower, so a Lovibond red much above 2.0 tells you the bleaching was light or the oil is tired — it matters visibly in a clear retail bottle. Peroxide matters because soybean oil carries linolenic acid at roughly 5–8%, which is the source of the reversion flavour the trade complains about: a beany, grassy note that appears as the oil oxidises, well before any objective rancidity. That is a shelf-life and fry-life question, not a refining defect, and it is why the peroxide figure needs a loading date beside it. Winterised soybean oil is available where the oil must stay clear under chill.

Soybean oil is the middle option, and it is bought as such. It is generally cheaper than refined sunflower oil while behaving similarly — liquid at ambient, neutral, no cloud-point problem like palm olein — which makes it the pragmatic choice for general food manufacturing, bakery, margarine and shortening blending, and volume retail bottling where the sunflower premium cannot be recovered at the till. Choose sunflower instead where the label or a cleaner, more stable flavour justifies the difference, or where the linolenic reversion note would show; choose palm olein where fry life and cost per tonne beat everything else. Supply is structured from Argentine and Brazilian crush alongside Black Sea and Southeast Asian refining, in 24 MT flexitanks, ISO tanks, drums and 1L/5L PET, with COA and SGS or Intertek certification plus Halal and phytosanitary documentation, on FOB, CFR and CIF terms.