Australia is finding buoyant demand for malting and feed barley in Asia and the Middle East and sold a cargo to Japan on Thursday, the country's main barley exporter said on Friday.
"We've had a lot of good forward sales on our books," Nigel Officer, general manager marketing at ABB Grain Ltd, said in an interview.
ABB sold a cargo of 20,000 tonnes of malting barley to Japan on Thursday, Officer said, adding that Japan "ticked along" as a very important regular buyer.
The firm is returning to full-strength sales this year after last season's drought decimated Australia's crop and exports.
Australia's barley exports are forecast to double to 5.2 million tonnes in the year ending October 31, after slumping to 2.6 million tonnes last year because of the drought.
In a typical year, Australia exports about five million tonnes of barley worth around A$1 billion ($787 million). It is the largest barley exporter in the world, excluding the 15-member European Union.
The recently harvested crop is estimated to have more than double to a record 8.5 million tonne from 3.7 million tonnes.
International demand for both malting and feed barley has been "fairly steady", and a big upturn is likely when China returns to bulk malting purchases, Officer said.
China withdrew from the market last year when beer sales plummeted as the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) kept people at home and out of restaurants.
"Everybody's waiting for serious Chinese malting barley purchasing interest to come to the fore," Officer said.
China so far had been buying "bits and pieces" of barley in containers, including sales by East Coast GrainCorp Ltd in the past week, he said.
But Chinese stocks of barley and malt would be down to extremely tight levels. "We expect the Chinese to be buying soon," the marketing head of Australia's biggest bulk barley exporter said.
However, abnormally small malting barley premiums over feed prices made shipments of malting barley to the Middle East as animal feed a distinct possibility, he said.
ABB, first established as the Australian Barley Board in 1939, has been receiving a lot of inquiries for feed barley from Saudi Arabia, although there had been no recent sales, he said.
"We suspect there will be further interest for shipments later in the year from the Middle East as a whole," he said.
"There is good underlying demand there." The suspension of Australian live sheep exports to Saudi Arabia, the result of last year's row over Saudi's rejection of a cargo of 58,000 sheep, was not causing a slackening of Saudi demand for Australian feed barley, Officer said.
The Australian government has suspended live sheep exports to Saudi Arabia, previously Australia's biggest customer for the animals, until the country agrees to a protocol that it accepts delivery of sheep it orders and allows to be loaded.
Rain in Saudi a few months ago created pasture growth which reduced demand for barley imports. But the impact was not as negative for barley exports as first thought, he said. "We expect Saudi will be back buying barley fairly soon."
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