Malaysian palm oil futures bounced back from early falls and closed higher on Wednesday, snapping four sessions of declines as bargain-hunting and a report of production drop offset a stronger ringgit. The February benchmark palm oil contract on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange closed more than 1 percent up at 2,300 ringgit ($546.06) per tonne.
Buyers were back in the market as four sessions of losses brought prices to attractive levels, said a palm oil trader in Kuala Lumpur.
"Market was up also partly because of the production decline," said another trader in Kuala Lumpur.
The Malaysia Palm Oil Association, a group of planters, reported a 10 percent decline in November 1-20 production from a month earlier, the trader added.
Earlier in the day, palm oil futures touched a session low of 2,260 ringgit, their lowest since October 27.
Exports of Malaysian palm oil products for November 1-25 were unchanged from a month earlier at 1,200,107 tonnes, cargo surveyor Intertek Testing Services said.
Traded volume stood 43,072 lots of 25 tonnes each, above the 35,000 lots averagely traded per day.
In other vegetable oil markets, the US December soyoil contract was up 0.5 percent in late Asian trading, while the most active soybean oil contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange rose 1.8 percent.