EU Grains Mixed In Light Trade
20/07/16 -- EU wheat closed mixed in relatively light trading activity. French analysts Agritel described the wheat harvest there as "very, very bad" but it seems like the rest of Europe has escaped that and got of with "very, very ordinary" in terms of both quality and quantity.
At the close Jul 16 London wheat was unchanged at GBP111.75/tonne, Sep 16 Paris wheat was up EUR0.25/tonne to EUR160.50/tonne, Aug Paris corn was down EUR1.75/tonne at EUR167.50/tonne and Aug 16 Paris rapeseed was EUR4.50/tonne higher at EUR364.50/tonne.
Agritel forecast the Germany wheat crop at 26 MMT, which is 1 MMT more than DRV's estimate from Friday, and 1.9% down on last year's bumper result.
The UK combines are still waiting to get going, but an average harvest of around 15.3-15.5 MMT is expected rather than a bin-buster.
Switch to Ukraine where things could be described as "very good" the wheat harvest is already 47% complete at 11.3 MMT. They've brought in a further 6 MMT of barley, off 65% of the planned area and 62% of the winter OSR crop producing 720 TMT of the oilseed so far.
The UKraine Ag Ministry predict a grain harvest in excess of 60 MMT for the 4th year in a row, and growers there are said to have already started planting OSR for the 2017 harvest.
In Russia things are more like "very, very good" - they've produced 25.1 MMT of wheat off 5.9 million ha and yields are up 12.4% at 4.25 MT/ha.
In addition they've cut 916k ha of barley producing a crop of 3.4 MMT so far. Yields are up 5% at 3.69 MT/ha.
UkArgroConsult said that Russia's share of the global wheat export market would grow to 16% in 2016/17 versus 14.1% last season. France's share by contrast will fall to 11% from 12.1%.
Jordan cancelled a tender to buy wheat. Syria were said to have bought 200,000 MT of Russian wheat. Tunisia tendered fro 120,000 MT of soft wheat, 67,000 MT of durum and 100,000 MT of feed barley.