EU Grains Close

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 17:12 | Categorized as

28/07/11 -- EU grains finished higher with Nov London wheat up GBP1.50/tonne to GBP165.00/tonne and with May climbing GBP1.85/tonne to GBP172.10/tonne. Nov Paris wheat was up EU4.25/tonne to EUR200.25/tonne whilst May12 rose EUR4.50/tonne to EUR206.00/tonne.

Selling interest was light as producers busy themselves with harvesting, determined not to oversell and in many cases still unsure of the final quality of their grain until it's in the barn.

Apart from those reasons they're weren't too many other bullish stories out there today.

The International Grains Council raised their global wheat production estimate by 8 MMT to 674 MMT and increased their ending stocks estimate by 5 MMT to 190 MMT - only 8 MMT below the "we've got so much wheat we can't give it away" year of 2008/09.

Ukraine hiked their grain harvest estimate to 51 MMT, 30% up on last year, saying that this season's corn crop could hit the 18 MMT mark which is 2.5 MMT more than the USDA currently project.

Romania says that it has harvested 5.8 MMT of wheat so far this year and that the final total could be 6.7 MMT - a million tonnes, or 18%, up on last year.

Meanwhile the EU’s Monitoring Agricultural Resources unit (MARS) pegs the EU-27 wheat crop only down marginally on last season at a fraction over 137 MMT, and sees barley production a million tonnes up on last year at 54.15 MMT. Corn output is forecast at 61.21 MMT. All three combined adds almost 10 MMT of grain to the EU's bottom line this year compared to current USDA projections.

Brussels granted 382,000 MT of EU soft wheat export licences this past week, taking the marketing year to date total to 977,000 MT - a fair total four weeks into the season and slightly higher than where we were this time twelve months ago.

However we've imported almost three times that volume, 2.8 MMT, during the same period whereas twelve months ago that figure was just 365,000 MT.

A revised bill to raise the US debt ceiling goes for a vote at the House of Representatives later tonight. Which means tomorrow could be interesting.