No surprises as US inspections for corn, soybeans, wheat in line

US grains inspections in the week ending February 15 all came in within the market’s expectations, according to data released by the USDA Tuesday.

Corn

Corn posted another strong performance in the week, at the upper end of expectations with 938,099 mt inspected, according to the data, up 90,000 mt on the previous week but some 250,000 mt below the same period of 2017.

That compared with expectations of between 800,000 to 1 million mt.

Overall, the current marketing year to date has seen 16..6 million mt exported, 32% behind the previous marketing year.

Once again, 100% of US Gulf Coast exports departed from the Mississippi River, with the bulk of the 499,378 mt heading to Peru (203,818 mt) and Japan (118,307 mt), while Pacific Northwest volumes were split between South Korea (203,221 mt) and Japan (103,266 mt).

Wheat

Expectations for wheat set a range of 325,000 to 575,000 mt with the final figure coming in at 422,298 mt, in the middle of that range.

The volume is down 15.5% on the previous week and 21% on the same period of the previous year.

Overall marketing year-to-date exports stand at 17.5 million mt, 4.5% behind the same point of the previous marketing year.

Hard red winter wheat formed the bulk of the exports, contributing 60% of the total volume exported – the bulk through the US Gulf Coast.

Spain, Morocco, Venezuela, Guatemala and Japan all picked up volumes of 30,000 mt or higher.

Soybeans

Soybean export sales inspections came in at 960,066 mt – down by 378,809 on the previous week and a more modest 50,000 mt lower than the same point in 2017.

However, the figure was towards the middle of the 750,000 mt to 1.1 million mt range that analysts had anticipated.

As ever, China took the entirety of the Pacific exports, and the overwhelming majority of Gulf exports.

Mexico, Turkey and Egypt were all significant buyers snapping up 81,728 mt, 70,614 and 66,002 mt respectively.