EU Grains Mostly Higher Again

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 09:23 | Categorized as

13/11/14 -- EU grains traded mostly higher, with wheat pressing on to new highs for the recent move.

At the close Nov 14 London wheat was up GBP0.90/tonne to GBP123.20/tonne, Nov 14 Paris wheat was EUR1.25/tonne higher at EUR176.00/tonne, Jan 15 Paris corn was up EUR0.75/tonne to EUR152.00/tonne, whilst Feb 15 Paris rapeseed ended EUR0.25/tonne lower at EUR337.25/tonne.

Sterling weakness helped London wheat, after comments yesterday by BoE chief Carney pushed back the prospect of an interest rate rise here well into 2015.

French analysts Strategie Grains raised their forecast for EU soft wheat exports this season from 24.2 MMT to 26.8 MMT. That cuts ending stocks here from the near 19 MMT forecast a month ago to around 17 MMT.

That's still a fairly large volume compared to more like 10 MMT a year previously though.

They upped their forecast for this season's soft wheat crop by 300 TMT to 147.7 MMT, a 9% rise on a year ago. They also raised their outlook on corn production this year to 73.5 MMT.

Taking a glance into next year they forecast the EU-28 all wheat crop at 148.7 MMT in 2015, a 4% drop on this year.

Sticking with that theme, at home the HGCA estimated UK wheat plantings for the 2015 harvest at 1.832 million hectares, a 5% fall versus a year ago.

UK winter barley plantings were estimated at 476k ha, a 12% rise compared to a year ago. Spring barley showings were forecast up 9% at 713k ha. The OSR area will fall 4% to 649k ha, they estimate.

MDA CropCast estimated the EU-28 all wheat crop next year at a little less than Strategie Grains, coming up with a figure of 148.4 MMT.

They also see output in Russia and Ukraine declining next year, in common with most other analysts, although maybe not at the moment by as much as some.