April 20, 2012

Due to another shipment to the US, UK wheat exports stayed on course to test official export indications which offset the impact of waning exports to the Netherlands.

The UK, the EU's third-ranked wheat producer, shipped 212,700 tonnes of the grain in February, customs data showed. While down nearly 1,900 tonnes on January, and the lowest figure for six months, the total was 71% higher than in February last year. And was well over the monthly rate, now 160,000 tonnes, needed to match an assessment from the UK's HGCA crop bureau of an exportable surplus of 2.62 million tonnes for the 2011-12 season, which closes at the end of June.

The HGCA said two weeks ago that UK wheat supplies were "finely balanced, despite slightly lower forecast consumption levels". Traders at a major European commodities house said on Tuesday (Apr 17): "As the export figures would indicate, the old crop balance sheet is tight."

February's exports were boosted, for a fourth successive month, by a hefty shipment to the US, this time of 47,250 tonnes. The load, transported by MV Vienna Wood, was the second US-bound load this year organised by Glencore's UK grain business, which said the wheat was destined for "the Wilmington bulk terminal, North Carolina, where it will be used in the manufacture of animal feed".

The cargo took to 195,000 tonnes the UK's exports to the US so far in 2011-12, making America the fourth-ranked destination for British wheat  shipments, after the Netherlands and Spain. Exports to the Netherlands - boosted earlier in the season by the obstacle that low river levels presented to Dutch mills sourcing grain from continental Europe - fell to 48,000 tonnes, their lowest of the marketing year. The data also showed bumper UK exports of rapeseed, of 155,150 tonnes.

Nearly all of these supplies went to continental Europe, where biodiesel plants are short of the oilseed following a weak harvest last year in many parts of the region, including Germany, which lost its place as the bloc's top grower.

The UK itself enjoyed a record rapeseed harvest last year. Total UK rapeseed exports so far in 2011-12 hit 635,000 tonnes as of the end of February, more than twice those at the same point last season.

Rapeseed shipments through the whole of 2010-11 reached 433,000 tonnes, and amounted to 98,000 tonnes the season before, according to Customs Data.