EU Grains Mostly Steadier, Pound Nervous Ahead Of BOE Announcement

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 09:48 | Categorized as

03/08/16 -- EU grains closed mostly steadier. Sterling remains nervous ahead of tomorrow's Bank of England announcement on interest rates, and monetary policy due tomorrow.

The day ended with benchmark Nov 16 GBP0.50/tonne higher at GBP127.75/tonne. Sep 16 Paris wheat traded down EUR0.25/tonne at EUR168.25/tonne, Aug corn was EUR1.75/tonne lower at EUR168.00/tonne and Nov 16 Paris rapeseed was EUR4.75/tonne firmer at EUR361.25/tonne.

Egypt said that they have sufficient wheat bought to cover their needs through to mid-Feb following yesterday's purchase of Russian wheat.

Russia said that they will analyse the trade proposal to remove the export duty on wheat. At the same time they sought to defend the tax saying it had worked well since it was introduced and hadn't interferred with trade, Russian exports in 2015/16 were at record levels after all.

It already looks like this record will be broken in 2016/17 whether the duty is remains or is removed.

The Russian harvest for 2016 stands at 53.9 MMT off only 30.9% of the intended area. That includes 40.5 MMT of wheat off 37% of plan, with yields running at 3.95 MT/ha (3.45 MT/ha in 2015). A record wheat crop in excess of 70 MMT is expected in some quarters and is achievable, it could be more.

The Russian barley harvest stands at 6.7 MMT off 25% of plan.

In Ukraine, the early harvest is 88% complete at 32.6 MMT. That includes 22.67 MMT of wheat (88% harvested) and 8.83 MMT of barley (92% done). They've also harvested 1.07 MMT of OSR off 90% of planned areas.

Jordan are tendering for 100,000 MT of hard wheat for Feb/Mar shipment along with 100,000 MT of feed barley for Jan delivery.