Soybean, wheat fall short of expectations in weekly export sales

Weekly export sales for soybean and wheat fell short of analysts’ expectations in the week ending January 25, while corn barnstormed to a greater-than-expected performance, according to USDA data published Thursday.

Wheat managed to fall short of the relatively modest expectations, which had seen analysts expecting export volumes of between 300,000 and 600,000 mt, with final volumes coming in at 289,100 mt for the 2017/18 marketing year.

Exports fared slightly better, at 515,100 mt, a rise of 37% versus the previous week and 57% above the four-week average.

Japan was the primary buyer in both cases, taking 91,100 mt of export sales and 101,100 mt of exports.

Soybeans saw the lowest net sales of the marketing year, down 42% at 359,000 mt – well outside the 600,000 mt to 1.2 million mt range that had been expected.

Exports stood at 1.2 million mt, a modest fall of 2% week-on-week, with China the lead recipient for exports and export sales, respectively 694,100 mt and 456,800 mt.

However, corn went to the other extreme and surpassed all expectations, hitting 1.8 million mt on export sales versus a range of 1 million to 1.7 million mt.

Those sales included South Korea, which recently secured US corn via feed tenders, and Egypt, which revealed a private sale of 115,000 mt last Friday.

Actual exports set a marketing year high of just over 1 million mt, with Japan taking a third of the volume, followed by Colombia at 201,800 mt.