Corn momentum slows, wheat and soy on target in US grains inspections

Corn export sales inspections have fallen short of market expectations in the latest grains for export data released by the USDA, while wheat and soybeans have hit their marks.

Corn

Relatively low prices and good export interest for US corn have supported corn markets in recent weeks and fired expectations, with analysts braced between 1.1 and 1.4 million mt in the week ending March 1.

Exports came in at 947,642 mt, down 28% on the previous week and half a million mt below the same period of 2017 to leave year-to-date figures nearly 10 million mt behind the previous marketing year.

So far in the 2017/18 marketing year, 18.9 million mt has been weighed for export, versus 27.3 million mt in the previous year.

Wheat

Wheat exports came in at 400,937 mt, nearly double the volume seen in the previous week and a whisker above analysts’ expectations, which had been capped at 400,000 mt.

The volume took year-to-date exports to 18.2 million mt, just behind the 19.5 million mt exported last year.

The bulk of the export inspections were for hard red winter wheat departing from the US Gulf Coast, with Korea, Columbia and Mexico amongst the biggest buyers.

Soybeans

Soybeans came in at the upper end of expectations with the 990,113 mt inspected over 200,000 mt over higher than last week’s figures and 50,000 mt higher than the same period of 2017.

That compared with expectations of between 700,000 and 1 million mt.

Amongst the buyers was Egypt with 120,975 mt and the Netherlands with 160,668 mt, while China secured 198,897 mt loading from the Pacific Northwest.