US export inspections see corn underperform, soy, wheat in line

US export inspections for the week ending January 11 showed a further mixed bag for US grains and soybeans, with wheat and soy in the range of expectations with corn falling short again.

Analysts had estimated US corn inspections at between 700,000 to 1 million mt, with the 584,389 mt revealed in the weekly report a fall 265,889 mt fall on the previous week, and a 326,456 mt fall on the same period of 2017.

Colombia was the biggest buyer out of the US Gulf, taking 99,133 mt, with Japan the destination for the bulk of the Pacific Northwest (PNW) volumes, taking 157,844 mt.

For interior export corn sales, Mexico was the top destination at 118,372 mt.

Wheat saw inspections of 368,651 mt, down on the same period of 2017, but markedly up on the disappointing figures recorded in the report for the week ending January 4, 2018.

That was towards the top of a range of analysts’ expectations which had bracketed 200,000 mt to 400,000 mt, with the biggest buyer the Philippines with 110,172 mt loading out of the PNW.

Soybeans had been braced for between 1 million and 1.3 million mt of export inspections, with the final figure of 1.2 million mt sitting right in the middle of that range.

Unsurprisingly, China was the biggest buyer, taking 477,019 mt from the US Gulf and a further 257,773 mt of the PNW loadings – all of the volume shipping via that route.