EU Wheat Close - Friday
On the week overall that put Nov 12 London wheat GBP0.60/tonne higher and Nov 12 Paris wheat EUR0.25/tonne lower.
It seems that the "mixed bag" nature of yesterday's USDA report hit home today as London wheat gave up most of Thursday's gains on the day, with Paris wheat wiping them all out and then some.
Adding fuel to the fire was another round of dire weekly export sales for US corn from the USDA. Weekly corn sales of only 4,200 MT for this marketing year and 10 TMT for 2013/14 fell well short of the expected 300-425 TMT.
Last week's fairly modest sales of 326,900 MT were in fact the highest in 20 weeks, indicating that global demand for US corn has taken a severe knock at current levels.
US wheat export sales this week were also below expectations at 279,900 MT, falling below Europe's weekly export licence total of 376,000 MT. The latter brings the 2012/13 marketing year to date total for soft wheat exports to 4.2 MMT, some 16% down on this time a year ago, yet the USDA have Europe down to export the same volume in 2012/13 as last season.
Russia Ag Ministry said Russia’s grain harvest is now complete, estimating the final haul at 71.7 MMT versus their previous estimate of 71.0 MMT and compared to 94.2 MMT in 2011.
US and EU wheat exports are expected to pick up, with Russia seemingly more or less sold out now until the start of 2013/14.
