EU Wheat Consolidates, Production Estimates Keep Rising Though
30/07/13 -- EU wheat closed firmer for a change, in consolidation mode following recent declines to one year lows in the case of London wheat and 19-month lows for Paris wheat.
Nov 13 London wheat ended the day GBP1.50/tonne firmer at GBP162.50/tonne and with Jan 14 closing up GBP0.50/tonne at GBP163.50/tonne. Nov 13 Paris wheat rose EUR1.25/tonne to close at EUR187.50/tonne.
Friendless Aug Paris rapeseed ended EUR4.50/tonne easier at EUR342.00/tonne - the lowest level on the front month continuous chart since July 2010. The contract will be put out of its misery when it goes off the board tomorrow.
The EU Commission raised their forecast for EU soft wheat production from the 128.9 MMT predicted last month to 131.7 MMT. They've also increased their barley estimate from 58.3 MMT to 59.4 MMT and upped their corn number from 69.7 MMT to 70.9 MMT.
The wheat number is actually lower than some of the other estimates around, French analysts Strategie Grains forecast production at 133.4 MMT earlier in the month and Toepfer went even higher at 134.2 MMT. The Commission's barley and corn estimates however are substantially higher than Strategie Grains forecasts of 57.3 MMT and 65.9 MMT respectively.
Oil World forecast the EU oilseed rape crop at 20.5 MMT, up slightly from last month and a 5.7% increase on the 19.4 MMT produced in 2012. Output is led by Germany with an anticipated crop of 5.8 MMT, up almost 21% on last year. The French crop will fall 9% to 5.0 MMT, with UK production seen down 23% to 2.0 MMT off a harvested area of 610,000 ha, they say. Poland will leapfrog the UK into third place in the European production table with a crop of 2.4 MMT, up more than 26% versus 2012.
The German Ag Ministry estimated Germany’s 2013 wheat crop at 23.24 MMT (versus 22.4 MMT in 2012), with barley at 10.09 MMT (vs. 10.39 MMT) and rapeseed production at 5.41 MMT (vs. 4.8 MMT).
New Ensus owners CropEnergies AG said that they expect to re-open the troubled Teesside plant in the autumn. They clearly haven't bought it to keep it in mothballs, which is good news for wheat growers.
Egypt booked 240 TMT of Ukraine and Romanian wheat in its fourth tender of the month, taking the total bought in July to 960 TMT. It was interesting to see even Russian wheat overlooked.
The Russian harvest now stands at 34.9 MMT off 26.6% of the planned area with yields averaging 2.84 MT/ha, an increase of 22.4% on last year. Wheat accounts for 28.4 MMT of that total. Agritel said that "The dry spell in May/June impacted test weights of wheat. In Rostov, Krasnodar, Stavropol, only 35% of the wheat will comply with milling standards."
Ukraine's early grain harvest (excluding corn) totals 26.6 MMT, including 19.56 MMT of wheat and 6.2 MMT of barley. They've also harvested 2.16 MMT of rapeseed versus a crop of only 1.4 MMT in 2012.
