Grains News, 20th / Sep / 2024

Euronext wheat was unable to turn the tide in trading and continued to head south yesterday. A loss of 2.75 euros/tonne to 215.75 euros/tonne was recorded for the leading front month. On the local German cash markets, the willingness of farmers to sell is low, as the goods are in storage and exports offer few prospects. Russian sales dominate the market, while French ports are described as "free of wheat". The animal feed industry and mills are not very active on the market, although good goods are in demand and are being offered at premiums. Meanwhile, experts at FranceAgriMer expect French soft wheat exports to countries outside the EU to amount to 4 million tons. This corresponds to a decrease of 3.5 million tons compared to the previous month. Deliveries to EU countries are estimated at 6 million tons, which corresponds to an increase of 0.5 million tons compared to the previous month. Due to lower overall production, stocks are expected to fall to 2.74 million tons, which is 0.3 million tons less than the previous estimate.

In the USA, the wheat complex recorded losses across the board. Weak export data had a particularly negative impact. According to the export sales report on Thursday morning, only 246,327 tons of wheat were sold in the week of September 12. This was below expectations of 300,000 to 650,000 tons for 2024/25 wheat sales, marking the lowest level since early July. The largest buyer was Mexico with 59,600 tons, while the Philippines bought 57,600 tons. Sales for 2025/26 were in the expected range of 0 to 50,000 tons and amounted to 11,500 tons this week. Meanwhile, official trade statistics show that China's wheat imports fell 51 percent year-on-year to 0.41 million tons in August. Nevertheless, the country imported a total of 10.49 million tons of wheat in the first eight months of the year, which is still an increase of 10 percent compared to the same period last year.

Corn futures on the CBoT closed Thursday's session with losses across all contracts. The USDA's export sales report showed 847,350 tons of corn bookings for the week of September 12, which was in the middle of estimates of 550,000 tons to 1.4 million tons and an improvement from the previous week and about 49.5% more than the same week last year. Mexico was the largest buyer at 280,800 tons, followed by 183,400 tons sold to unknown destinations. Meanwhile, China's corn imports fell by 64% to 0.43 million tons in August. Year-to-date export value stands at 12.56 million tons, down 16 percent year-on-year. Paris corn also closed yesterday's trading day with losses.