EU Grains Close

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 19:23 | Categorized as

25/05/11 -- EU grains closed with July London wheat up GBP1.75 to GBP193.75/tonne and with new crop Nov up GBP1.90/tonne to GBP193.25/tonne. Nov Paris wheat closed EUR3.75/tonne higher at EUR244.75/tonne whilst May12 was up EUR3.50/tonne to EUR245.00/tonne.

The July/Nov London wheat spread has narrowed to just GBP0.50/tonne from GBP37.00/tonne in little more than a month as new crop prospects continue to decline.

The first winter barley was cut in the Charantes area of France yesterday, with resulting yields described at "catastrophic" by Agritel, although they did concede that this was possibly not the land with the best potential.

Defra came out with some revised 2010/11 grain ending stocks numbers today, pegging UK wheat inventories at 1.51 MMT, representing the lowest stocks:use ratio since 1997/98. The UK exportable surplus is now 2.44 MMT, they said, although that's clearly too low as we've already exported 2.34 MMT of that by the end of March.

Ukraine announced that they are to lift the existing grain export quota system. The country will export 8-9 MMT of wheat in 2011/12 (an increase of around 130-150% on this season), and 5-6 MMT of barley (an increase of 100-140%), they said.

Russia are expected to lift their own export embargo sometime across the summer as the balance of export power switches away from the US and Europe, and back in favour of the Black Sea nations.

Stories abound that Russian trading houses have large stocks of grain sitting at the ports just waiting for the green light.