Australia's national wheat exporter AWB Ltd is running fast with international expansion plans and sales, shrugging off international controversy over alleged kickbacks to Saddam Hussein.
The group told Reuters on Wednesday it was moving to establish wheat trading bureaux in Eastern Europe and Latin America in the next few years to export up to 10 million tonnes of wheat from those regions in up to 5 years time.
This would begin to rival AWB's normal annual wheat exports from Australia, of around 16-17 million tonnes.
Black Sea and Latin American wheat would join 3-4 million tonnes of wheat which AWB traded in 2005 from offices in Geneva and New Delhi. Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union countries on the Black Sea accounted for around a quarter of the world wheat trade, "a very significant force", said AWB Managing Director Andrew Lindberg.