EU Grains Close - Friday

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 08:25 | Categorized as

22/06/12 -- EU grains finished higher with Jul 12 London wheat ending up GBP3.25/tonne to GBP183.00/tonne, and new crop Nov 12 ending GBP1.80/tonne higher to close at GBP161.55/tonne. Aug 12 Paris wheat was EUR2.25/tonne higher at EUR214.25/tonne, whilst Nov 12 was EUR2.25/tonne firmer at EUR216.50/tonne.

For the week, Jul 12 London wheat was up GBP8.00/tonne and Nov 12 gained GBP7.55/tonne. Aug 12 Paris wheat rose EUR11.25/tonne and Nov 12 EUR12.75/tonne.

At home, old crop is being supported by ideas that the harvest is likely to be 2-3 weeks behind normal following another week of widespread heavy rain. What we do have left from the 2011 harvest is therefore going to have to last a bit longer than expected.

Potential yields and bushel weights look very promising after the crop has enjoyed abundant moisture availability in the past couple of months. It's quality that is now the main concern.

Harvesting a large crop of high moisture wheat that needs to go through the dryer first to only wind up making feed grade is what everybody is worried about now.

Across the Channel French and German wheat has enjoyed plenty of recent moisture too, except they've also had their rainfall events interspersed with more sunshine than we have seen here in the UK.

Toepfer raised their forecast on German wheat production by more than 1.2 MMT today, from 21.49 MMT to 21.71 MMT, citing beneficial spring rains.

FranceAgriMer rate 73% of the wheat crop there as being in good/excellent condition, a year ago it was only 27%. They also reduced their forecast for 2011/12 soft wheat exports by 200,000 MT to 15.7 MMT citing a lack of competitiveness into its traditional homes in North Africa - particularly Egypt.

The main French port of Rouen only handled 60 TMT of grain for export this week, down by more than a third on last week. Of that total 45 TMT was wheat with Cameroon the top destination.

With one week left to go to bring the 2011/12 marketing year to a close Brussels issued 144 TMT of soft wheat export licences this week, bringing the year to date total to 12.4 MMT, 32% lower than the 18.2 MMT that had been granted at this time a year ago.

Early yield results out of Ukraine and Russia are poor, although it is likely that the worst of the crops are being harvested first. Barley yields in the Crimea region of Ukraine are said to only be coming in at around 2 MT/ha compared with the national average of 3.7 MT/ha last year.

Agritel forecast that the barley crop there will struggle to make 8.0 MMT, and will probably only muster 7.7 MMT versus 9.1 MMT a year ago, although that is still 200,000 MT more than the USDA's latest estimate.