EU Grains Mostly A Little Lower To Start The Week

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 08:55 | Categorized as

13/10/14 -- EU grains closed mixed, but mostly a little easier - although well off the lows of the day - to start the week.

 Nov 14 London wheat finished down GBP0.10/tonne at GBP112.65/tonne, Nov 14 Paris wheat was down EUR1.25/tonne at EUR157.50/tonne, Nov 14 Paris corn was up EUR0.25/tonne at EUR141.00/tonne and Nov 14 Paris rapeseed fell EUR1.75/tonne to EUR322.25/tonne.

Brent crude hit it's lowest since Dec 2010. Ideas that falling petrol prices will keep UK inflation low suggest that the BOE will be under little pressure to raise interest rates just yet. That could prevent sterling from getting too strong and thereby support London wheat a little, not that we are awash with export interest - certainly not for feed wheat anyway.

Egypt's Supplies Minister said that, following Friday's wheat purchase, the country has enough wheat bought to last it until early March. He said that they plan to cut their international wheat purchasing to 4.0-4.5 MMT next year. They propose to achieve this via reform of the domestic grain subsidies program.

Egypt currently pay more than $100/tonne more for home grown wheat on the domestic market than the cost of imported wheat, according to a report on Reuters. The government have recently announced that they will pay local farmers the same price in 2015 for home grown wheat as they did in 2014 in an effort to increase plantings, which it is expected to do.

Algeria were said to have bought around 600 TMT of probably EU-origin wheat for Jan-Feb shipment last week.

Ukraine said that it had now harvested 48.2 MMT of grains off 83% of the planned area. The wheat and barley harvest finished a while ago at 24.4 MMT and 9.3 MMT respectively, and they have so far cut 11.8 MMT of corn off around half of the planned area.

Ukraine farmers had also completed winter grain plantings on just over 6 million hectares, or 81% of the anticipated area, with wheat accounting for nearly 5.4 million ha of that total. They've also completed their winter OSR sowings at 854k ha, the Ministry said.

APK Inform said that Ukraine had shipped 684.4 TMT of grains via it's seaports in the week to Oct 12, a 38% increase on the previous week. That total included 524.9 TMT of wheat, 130.3 TMT of barley and 29.3 TMT of corn. Spain (134.7 TMT) and Saudi Arabia (125 TMT) were the top destinations.

The Ukraine Ministry said that grain exports for the season so far are over 9.5 MMT, including nearly 5.7 MMT of wheat, 3 MMT of barley and 721 TMT of corn.

UkrAgroConsult estimated Ukraine's total wheat exports this season at 9.5-10.0 MMT.

Russia said that their harvest was now in the home straight at almost 92% done, producing a crop of 103.5 MMT in bunker weight to date. The wheat harvest is a little over 92% done at 60.3 MMT, the barley harvest is more than 96% done at 20.8 MMT and they've now processed over 60% of the planned corn area, producing a crop of 7.4 MMT so far.

FranceAgriMer reported on Friday that the French corn harvest was 9% done as of last Monday, up from 3% a week previously and compared to 2% done a year ago. They raised the proportion of this year's remaining corn crop rated good to very good by 2 points to 88%, far higher than only 57% a year ago.

They said that French winter wheat plantings for the 2015 harvest were 23% done, up from 9% a week previously and versus 20% a year ago. Winter barley is 43% planted versus 15% a week ago and 39% a year ago. They said that 6% of the newly planted wheat crop was emerged, up from zero a week ago and compared to 4% a year ago. Barley emergence was 10% versus 1% a week previously and 8% this time last year.