Russian grain export prices edge up

Russian grain export prices strengthened slightly last week on rising export demand, while domestic prices continued to decline gradually as stocks remained high, analysts said on Monday. "Last week saw a certain revival of exporters activity in the southern part of Russia and certain traders raised prices," SovEcon agricultural analysts said.
"Russian wheat remained competitive against European and some exporters had urgent contracts to honour." SovEcon said some traders offered to buy fourth-grade (ordinary) milling wheat at 5,500-5,650 roubles ($162.9-$167.3) per tonne CPT Novorossiisk.
The Institute for Agricultural Market Studies (IKAR) said export prices have slightly strengthened for ordinary food wheat to $178 per tonne and for feed barley to $138 (both FOB Novorossiisk), and for corn to $140 (FOB small Azov sea ports).
Domestic cash prices continued to gradually descend down to $157 per tonne for third-grade wheat, to $135 for fourth-grade, to $110 for fifth-grade feed wheat, and to $86 per tonne for feed barley, ex-works, southern Russia. Domestic maize prices were unchanged at around $100 per tonne, it said.
SovEcon said domestic prices for grain declined by some 50 roubles per tonne on average due to high domestic stocks, which by March 1 were 60 percent larger than at the same date a year ago. A decision to stop purchase of feed grains and concentrate on more liquid food grains during weekly Russian intervention purchases resulted in a rather modest acquisition of 168,000 tonnes of grain.
Total intervention purchase volumes exceed 8.8 million tonnes, although the volume of grain actually delivered to government-appointed elevators was 6.25 million tonnes, IKAR said. Weekly export activities were quite intensive, exceeding 500,000 tonnes, and the total volume exported since the start of 2008/09 crop year was estimated at 16.5 million tonnes.
IKAR said in the 2008/09 season Russia has already exported a record volume of maize - over 750,000 tonnes, almost 10 times more than the previous record volume of 81,000 tonnes exported in the entire record high season of 2006/07. "A combination of record high output, favourable weather during the harvest time, and improved agricultural technologies have improved the quality of the maize, which is a traditional drawback of Russian maize," it said.
More than half of Russian maize exports were shipped to Egypt. Crude sunoil prices rose over $700 per tonne FOB Black Sea, while domestic prices for sunoil lost 400 roubles and sunseed prices 500 roubles, SovEcon said. The crude sunoil export price has increased to $710 per tonne, while the domestic sunoil market remained rather weak, wholesale price stayed at the level of $680 per tonne, IKAR said.
It said domestic sunseed purchase prices fell to $268-$283 per tonne. Soybeans in southern Russia were offered at $563-$577 per tonne, soybean oil at $626-$686 per tonne. Domestic white sugar prices declined to $602 per tonne from $622 per tonne in Krasnodar over last week, IKAR said.