EU Grains Close -Friday

16/12/16 -- EU grains closed mostly lower on the day and with little change from last Friday.

At the close Jan 17 London wheat was down GBP0.65/tonne at GBP135.40/tonne, Mar 17 Paris wheat was EUR0.25/tonne higher at EUR167.75/tonne, Jan 17 Paris corn was EUR0.75/tonne lower at EUR164.75/tonne and Feb 17 Paris rapeseed was down EUR2.50/tonne to EUR417.25/tonne.

EU soft wheat exports continue to slow up and are now running just 1% ahead of year ago levels at a cumulative 11.13 MMT after 135,000 MT was exported this week.

Cunulative barley exports are 65% down compared to this time last year at 1.88 MMT, including 118,000 MT shipped this week.

EU corn imports are running 19% lower year-on-year at 4.22 MMT.

Algeria bought 490,000 MT of unknown origin wheat on the international market. At least some of that should end up coming from the EU, and possibly even the UK which has been enjoying some success in this direction recently.

FranceAgriMer reported unchanged French winter wheat and barley crop conditions from last week at 94% and 92% good to very good respectively.

Strategie Grains increased their forecast for EU-28 soft wheat exports in 2016/17 by 170 TMT to 23.4 MMT (still down sharply on 32.7 MMT in 2015/16)

They estimated the 2017 EU-28 soft wheat crop at 145 MMT versus 135.9 MMT this year.

Ukraine said that it had exported 20.06 MMT of grains so far this season versus 19.18 MMT this time last year. Wheat accounts for 10.6 MMT of that total, up from 9.5 MMT a year ago. Corn exports are down 0.45 MMT at 5.3 MMT.