EU Grains Mostly Steady
24/08/16 -- EU grains closed mostly higher on the day except for London wheat which was lower on the back of an improved sterling.
The day ended with benchmark Nov 16 GBP0.85/tonne lower at GBP127.65/tonne. Sep 16 Paris wheat traded EUR2.50/tonne higher at EUR158.50/tonne, Nov 16 corn was up EUR1.25/tonne at EUR166.00/tonne and Nov 16 Paris rapeseed was EUR0.75/tonne higher at EUR378.78/tonne.
The pound closed above 1.32 vs the US dollar and 1.17 compared to the euro tonight.
Now that he rain has gone away, the UK harvest can restart in earnest. "Wheat quality so far looks promising and with more milling type varieties in the mix, it is likely that the UK wheat crop can be of more use to the domestic miller, as well as the export customer, " says the HGCA's Jack Watts.
"If this is the case, and with support from weaker sterling, there could be less need to import milling wheat this season (2016/17). Looking at this ambitiously, we might hope that UK wheat imports fall below 1 MMT – for the first time since 2011/12," he adds.
The lowest offer in yesterday's Egyptian tender was Ukraine wheat at $171.10/tonne FOB (sterling equivalent GBP129.62/tonne), which is still far more competitive than anything the UK could put together - weak sterling or not. All 11 offers in that were from the Black Sea.
In other news, Russia said that they'd exported 3.63 MMT of grains this season so far (to Aug 18), a 4% drop on this time a year ago. That includes 2.98 MMT of wheat, 589 TMT of barley and 39 TMT of corn.
The Russian Ag Ministry said that this year's harvest was 59.1% complete at 86.9 MMT. That includes 58.9 MMT of wheat off 62.6% of the planned area, along with 15.2 MMT of barley (73% of plan).
Syria postponed their tender for 1 MMT of Russian wheat and Jordan made no purchase in their 100,000 MT feed barley tender.
