PARIS: An official tally of European Union soft wheat exports so far this season showed a sharp increase for a second week, although the European Commission said figures for France were still incomplete following a long-running technical error.
EU soft wheat exports so far in the 2021/22 season that started in July had reached 12.84 million tonnes by Dec. 5, compared with 11.62 million tonnes reported a week earlier.
A breakdown of volumes for the EU’s 27 member states indicated 2.87 million tonnes of soft wheat exports for France, almost 1 million tonnes more than the 1.88 million reported by the Commission last week.
The Commission’s data had already added more than 1 million tonnes for French soft wheat exports in the previous weekly update, as it caught up on data that had been incomplete since the end of July.
The Commission nonetheless reiterated in this week’s report that the French figures were not complete, without giving further details. Loading data compiled by Refinitiv suggests that France has shipped about 3.5 million tonnes of soft wheat outside the EU so far this season.
The incomplete data from France, the EU’s biggest grain supplier, was caused by a system fault at the French customs service and has frustrated traders at a time of strong demand and record wheat prices. This week’s update by the Commission put EU soft wheat exports so far in 2021/22 above the pace last season, when 11.54 million tonnes had been exported by the same week.
EU 2021/22 barley exports had reached 4.31 million tonnes, against 3.49 million a year ago, including 1.90 million for France. That was a much smaller adjustment that the previous week when the Commission had added just over 1 million tonnes to the French barley export volume to 1.75 million tonnes. EU maize imports so far in 2021/22 were at 5.63 million tonnes, against 7.43 million a year ago, the Commission’s data also showed.
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