EU Wheat Closing Comments

EU wheat futures closed the last trading session of the year with March Paris milling wheat futures down EUR0.50 at EUR133.25/tonne and London May feed wheat futures closing up GBP0.35, at GBP112.25/tonne.

As might be expected it was a fairly quiet session with little more than 1,000 lots traded in Paris all day. London saw a bit more activity than other days this week, with 293 lots traded in what can only be attributed to year-end book squaring.

Egypt was back in the market again, booking four 60,000 MT cargoes of Russian wheat for March shipment, two priced at USD191.88/tonne and two at USD191.47/tonne.

These bids comfortably beat the cheapest one load port French wheat offered, which was at USD194.39/tonne.

Interestingly, French wheat basis a two load port option was offered by Soufflet at a USD6.20 discount and by Invivo at a USD3.40 discount to their one load port prices. For the time being at least, Egypt are sticking by their newly introduced rule of a minimum 60,000 MT strictly one port of loading.

For the record, November London wheat closed the day at GBP114.20/tonne, GBP7.30 down on the year. The high for the year was GBP135.00/tonne (set in January), and the low GBP105.20/tonne (September), giving a GBP29.80/tonne trading range.

Paris November wheat ended at EUR142.50/tonne, EUR8.00 lower than when the contract was introduced in March, having had a trading range of EUR36.50/tonne across the remainder of 2009. The years high was EUR170/tonne set in June, and the years low EUR133.50 set in September.