US Plains hard red winter wheat basis values were holding steady on Thursday, with market players keying strategies to surging futures prices and strong mill demand. New-crop July wheat futures on the Kansas City Board of Trade soared to a new contract high overnight, hitting $9.36, after a late rally in the pit Wednesday.
The KCBT March contract ended Wednesday in the pit up 3 cents at $9.59. Prices were called 10 to 20 cents higher Thursday. The gains were due in part to mounting concerns about tight supplies of spring wheat. Mills increasingly have been looking to HRW wheat with high protein for blending needs.
HRW wheat with 13 percent protein was quoted at $10.85 a bushel in Kansas City. In export news Thursday, the US Agriculture Department said that weekly export sales of US wheat totalled 404,800 tonnes, 99 percent above the prior four-week average.
Net sales for 2008/09 totalled 89,000 tonnes. Trade estimates were for 350,000 to 450,000 tonnes. Also, Japan's Ministry of Agriculture bought 105,000 tonnes of milling wheat from the United States, and 20,000 tonnes from Canada and 25,000 tonnes from Australia through a regular tender that closed on Thursday.
In other world wheat news, wheat production in Russia rose to 49.4 million tonnes in 2007 from 45.0 million tonnes a year earlier, official data showed. Increases were noted in both the Siberian spring wheat harvest and the winter wheat crop in central Russia.
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