Russian export prices continued to rise amid challenging conditions

MOSCOW: Russian wheat export prices continued to rise last week, following global markets, amid continuing difficult weather conditions for the crop.

The price of 12.5 per cent protein Russian new crop wheat scheduled free-on-board (FOB) with delivery in November was $223 per metric ton at the end of last week, up $1, DmitryRylko, head of IKAR consultancy said.

The Sovecon consultancy reported that prices for Russian wheat with the same protein content were $222-224 per ton, up from $219-221 the previous week.

“Dry weather in Russia continues to support bullish sentiment. Models predict rains starting in mid-October, but more reliable short-term systems show no significant precipitation during the first half of the month,” Sovecon said in a weekly note.

“Farmers are voicing concerns over the state of their winter wheat across most regions, except parts of the South”, it said, adding that Russian FOB prices are expected to “continue rising gradually”.

Weekly grain exports are estimated at 0.87 million tons, down from 1.33 million a week ago, including 0.80 million tons of wheat, down from 1.29 million.Sovecon raised its September export estimate by 0.1 million tons to 5.0 million tons versus 4.9 million tons a year ago.

However, it cut its 2024/25 Russian wheat export forecast last week to 47.6 million metric tons and total grain exports to 55.4 million metric tons due to bad weather affecting the harvest, noting high export volumes at the start of the season.

Russian grain exporters’ lobby Rusgrain urged curbs on low price exports last week in the face of a lower harvest than last year and said it wanted to propose a review of the export quota mechanism.Russia’s Agriculture Ministry said it will review its 2024 crop forecast this week.As of Oct 1, Russian farmers had harvested 111.1 million tons of grain.