EU Grains Mostly Lower In Uneventful Trade

26/11/15 -- EU grains closed mostly lower in uneventful trade with US markets closed for Thanksgiving. Rapeseed pressed on to new highs for the move, closing at the best levels on a front month since Aug 10th.

At the close, new front month Jan 16 London wheat was down GBP0.45/tonne at GBP114.00/tonne, Dec 15 Paris wheat was down EUR0.75/tonne at EUR177.00/tonne, Jan 16 Paris corn was EUR0.50/tonne lower at EUR166.50/tonne, whilst Feb 16 Paris rapeseed jumped EUR3.50/tonne to EUR385.50/tonne.

Rapeseed is getting support from rising palm oil prices on the back of El Nino-perceived crop losses in Indonesia/Malaysia and also reduced EU and Ukraine plantings again this year.

Nervousness over what action Russia might take with regards to the Turkish downing of one of their jets earlier in the week might also be prompting a bit of short-covering in grains in general.

Turkey was reportedly a destination for 3.5 MMT, or around 12%, of all Russian grain exports so far this year. Around 1.4 MMT of that was imported in Q1 of 2015/16, almost 14% of all Russia's foreign sales.

Brussels confirmed that they'd released 523 TMT worth of soft wheat export licences this past week, down from a season to date high of 636 TMT a week ago. That takes cumulative 2015/16 exports to 8.7 MMT, down 27.5% on this time last year. France picked up 139 TMT, or 26.5%, of the weekly total. Their season to date share is now 2.8 MMT, or 23.3%.

Barley export licences this week were only 97 TMT, down from 126 TMT a week ago. Even so season to date barley exports total 4.6 MMT. Corn import licences were slightly higher than those granted for wheat imports at 527 TMT, taking the campaign total so far to 4.4 MMT.

Euro weakness continues, which should help EU exports as we enter 2016.

Algeria were said to have bought 75,000 MT of optional origin feed barley in a tender.

Russia's 2015 corn harvest is said to be 89.1% complete at 12.5 MMT off 2.4 million ha. Average yields are reported to be up 13.7% at 5.15 MT/ha.

Russian winter grain plantings for the 2016 harvest remain stalled at 16.3 million ha, or 95.3% of the government target.