Russia dominates wheat market, push out France

France struggling with concerns over poor quality after heavy flooding

MOSCOW: In the race to supply wheat to the world’s biggest buyer, Russia is running away with the prize.

Russia has supplanted the US as the top exporter of the grain and won the lion’s share of the wheat purchased in the first two tenders this season by Egypt, which buys huge amounts of wheat to provide citizens with cheap bread. Traders haven’t even bothered offering grain from France, which is struggling with concerns over poor quality after heavy flooding this year.

While it’s normal for countries near the Black Sea, including Ukraine and Romania, to take the lead at the start of the season and French sales to pick up later, Russia has a low-price advantage that is fuelling the surge in its market share. The weak ruble, prime weather conditions and more investment are accelerating a generation-long rebound of agriculture in Russia and unseating American farmers who were the world’s biggest wheat sellers for more than five decades.

“With the harvest delays in France, traders are not even willing to look at French wheat now,” said Matt Ammermann, a commodity risk manager at futures and options broker INTL FCStone Inc in Plymouth, Minnesota. “Black Sea just has so much to sell right now and the quality too is coming out better than expected.”

Russia will export a record 25.5 million metric tonnes in the season started in July, the most in the world for a second straight year, the US Department of Agriculture estimates. Global output will rise to a record for a fourth straight season, and stockpiles have never been bigger, USDA data show. Prices on the Chicago Board of Trade, the global benchmark, fell this month to the lowest since 2007.

Wheat for loading at Black Sea ports was $165 a metric ton as of Friday, according to the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies in Moscow. That’s almost $15 cheaper than French wheat with a minimum of 11 per cent protein content for loading at the port of Rouen, based on FranceAgriMer data.

In two tenders this month, Egypt agreed to buy 480,000 tons of wheat with half coming from Russia, and Ukraine and Romania supplying the rest. Last season, Russia also led sales for the first time in three years.

Globally, Russia will capture about 16 per cent of the wheat market, up from 14.4 per cent last year, according to Kiev-based UkrAgroConsult. France will likely see its market share decline to 11 per cent from 12.1 per cent last season, the research firm said. The US share will rise as its output grows, but at 14.9 per cent will still fall short of the top spot, USDA data show.

“Russia’s position in the wheat market is changing because Russian farmers have received high margins from selling their grains crop of last year, which they have used to invest in better farming inputs and technology,” said Sergey Feofilov, the General Director of UkrAgroConsult.