EU Grains Trade Lower To Start The Week

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 08:25 | Categorized as

28/09/15 -- EU grains settled mostly lower to begin the new week, possibly considering that last week's decent gains maybe provided something of a selling opportunity?

At the close, Nov 15 London wheat was down GBP0.65/tonne to GBP115.15/tonne. In Paris, Dec 15 wheat fell EUR0.75/tonne to EUR175.75/tonne, Nov 15 corn finished EUR1.75/tonne weaker at EUR163.50/tonne and Nov 15 rapeseed ended EUR2.25/tonne lower at EUR367.50/tonne.

EU farmer and cooperative body Copa Cogeca estimated the EU-28 soft wheat crop at 146.3 MMT this year, down less than 1% on last season's record, if still almost 2 MMT below Coceral's Friday forecast of 148.2 MMT. They have barley production at 56.7 MMT, down less than 0.5% on last season, but again well below Coceral who were using that estimate as long ago as June, and raised the bar to 60.3 MMT last week.

Copa Cogeca peg this year's EU-28 corn crop at 55.7 MMT, down 24.5% on last season's record and 3.8 MMT below Coceral's estimate. They see rapeseed production in the bloc at 20.9 MMT versus Coceral's 21.45 MMT estimate.

Fancy that, the EU farmers and own cooperatives organisation estimating production of all four grains/oilseeds lower than Coceral by a combined total of nearly 10 MMT!

Copa Cogeca incidentally have the UK wheat crop at 15.9 MMT versus 16.6 MMT a year ago, with barley output here at 7.1 MMT versus 7.0 MMT and rapeseed production at 2.3 MMT versus 2.5 MMT.

Ukraine said that it had exported 8.86 MMT of grains so far this season, including 4.79 MMT of wheat, 2.70 MMT of barley and 1.35 MMT of corn. Exports of the latter are expected to start to pick up soon once the 2015 harvest is a little more advanced.

APK Inform said that Ukraine's seaports shipped out 703.5 TMT of grains last week, down from the previous week's impressive 902.4 TMT total, but still a decent volume. Wheat exports last week accounted for almost 500 TMT, barley nearly 147 TMT whereas corn shipments were little more than 57 TMT.

The Ukraine Ag Ministry said that their 2015 grain harvest was now 77% done at nearly 41 MMT. The corn harvest is said to be only 18% complete so far, producing a crop of 3.3 MMT. Average yields of only 4.49 MT/ha to date are still well below the USDA's forecast of 6.59 MT/ha for the season.

They also said that the country had now sown 3 million ha of winter grains for the 2016 harvest (or 41% of the government target). Most of that (2.8 million ha) is winter wheat.

Winter rapeseed sowings appear stalled at 558k ha, or only 68% of the original forecast.

Kazakhstan said that it's 2015 grain harvest was almost 75% done on over 11 million ha for a crop of nearly 13.2 MMT so far.

As with Ukraine, Russia's seaports exported less grain last week (447 TMT) than the previous week (535 TMT). Last week's volume included 337 TMT of wheat, 66 TMT of barley and 38 TMT of corn.