March 14, 2008

EU on-week soft wheat export licenses increase, giving rise to total exports

EU licenses to export soft wheat rose to 338,000 tonnes for the week ended on March 11, 2008, EU data showed on Thursday.

This is up from 248,000 tonnes in the previous week and brings the total for 2007-2008 to 5.1 million tonnes.

As of March 11, licenses for soft wheat flour showed exports of 1.1 million tonnes, up from 1 million tonnes for the previous week ended period and 804,000 tonnes for the same date last year.

This makes the EU a net soft wheat exporter of 981,000 tonnes for the marketing year so far, up from 694,000 tonnes a week earlier.

Traditionally, the EU is a major net exporter of soft wheat, but sales this season got off to a slow start, with import licenses exceeding those to export until early February. Recently, demand has started to pick up as supplies in other exporting nations run low.

For the same period in 2006-07, EU soft wheat export licenses tallied 6.6 million tonnes for net exports of 3.4 million tonnes. 

But as of 37 weeks into the season, the EU is a net grain importer of 7.4 million tonnes, which is in contrast to net exports of 4.1 million the same time last season. This is due mostly to an increase in corn and sorghum imports due to their use as cheap feed alternative to wheat.