EU Grains At New 50-Month Lows

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 19:16 | Categorized as

23/09/14 -- EU grains closed mostly lower again, with yet more new 50-month closing lows set in London and Paris wheat and Paris corn. It's unclear if we are now at the panic or capitulation stage.

The day ended with Nov 14 London wheat down GBP0.75/tonne to GBP109.75/tonne, Nov 14 Paris wheat closed EUR1.00/tonne lower at EUR150.25/tonne, Nov 14 Paris corn was down EUR3.00/tonne to EUR131.25/tonne, whilst Nov 14 Paris rapeseed was EUR0.75/tonne firmer at EUR311.25/tonne.

The EU Commission's MARS unit raised their forecast for EU average soft wheat yields from 5.85 MT/ha to 5.88 MT/ha, along with upping their corn yield estimate from 7.53 MT/ha to 7.59 MT/ha.

They also forecast EU corn and rapeseed yields unchanged from last month at 7.53 MT/ha and 3.33 MT/ha respectively.

For the UK specifically they pegged wheat yields at 8.24 MT/ha, with those for barley at 5.81 MT/ha and rapeseed at 3.81 MT/ha.

Ukraine said that they'd harvested 39.6 MMT of grains so far off 72% of the planned area. This year's corn harvest is 17% complete at 3.43 MMT, they said.

They also said that they'd now planted over 2m ha of winter grains, around 27% of the planned area, including 1.94k ha of winter wheat (31% of plan). Recent heavy rains are now disrupting the late corn harvest and also plantings for 2015, although they will be helping what has been sown already.

The Ukraine Ministry said that the country had exported 7.4 MMT of grains so far this year, including 4.3 MMT of wheat, 2.6 MMT of barley and 400 TMT of corn.

APK Inform said that only 56% of this year's Ukraine wheat crop would make milling standard versus 69% a year ago.

Russia said that they'd now harvested 91.9 MMT of grains off 76% of the planned area. That total includes 55.2 MMT of wheat, 19.8 MMT of barley and 3.8 MMT of corn. They also said that winter grain planting was now complete on 10.2 million ha, or 62% of the plan, and up sharply from only 7 million ha a year ago.

The Russian Ag Ministry also said that they will begin purchasing "up to 5 MMT" of intervention grains starting on Sep 30.

Kazakhstan said that they'd now harvested 9.5 MMT of grains off 58% of the planned area.

The EU have announced that they are to raise the import duty on corn shipped in from outside the trade bloc from EUR5.32/tonne to EUR10.44/tonne. It's unclear yet whether Ukraine will be given a preferential duty free quota as they have been in 2013/14.

Oil World estimated the 2014/15 global rapeseed production at 67.5 MMT versus a previous estimate of 68.7 MMT and the 2013/14 crop of 70.0 MMT.

Tunisia's Ag Ministry forecast their 2014 grain crop at 2.34 MMT versus only 1.3 MMT a year ago.