Wheat exports from Western Australia, Australia's top grain exporting state, are approaching record levels, helped by Iran returning to the global wheat market and solid demand from traditional customers such as Indonesian flour millers. Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd said on Tuesday that the state's wheat exports could reach 8.4 million tonnes in the marketing year ended September, just short of the record nine million tonnes exported in 2003/04.
Exports for the first 10 months of the marketing year totalled about 7.2 million tonnes. This came after Australia's wheat export industry was liberalised last year, ending a monopoly over exports held by AWB Ltd, the former Australian Wheat Board. This year grain trading firms such as Cargill Inc, Glencore International and Louis Dreyfus joined AWB in exporting wheat through export terminals operated by West Australia's farmer-owned CBH Group.
Iran emerged as Western Australia's biggest wheat customer this year, overtaking Indonesia and buying 1.57 million tonnes or 24 percent of the wheat exported during the 10 months to July. It was forced to import millions of tonnes of wheat after cold weather and drought damaged crops over the past two years.
ANZ agri-economist Paul Deane is tipping that Western Australia's 2009/10 wheat harvest, which starts next month, will yield 9.5 million tonnes, up 7 percent on the previous year. The estimate is above the state Department of Agriculture and Food's forecast of a 7.5 million tonnes to nine million tonnes crop, released late on Friday.
The department said crops were generally growing well following good rainfall throughout August. Grain traders do not expect the export-focused Western Australian wheat industry to have any problems in finding customers for its product, especially higher protein wheat. ANZ's Deane expects carryover stocks of 600,000 at the end of September, leaving potential for the state to have an exportable surplus of 9.4 million tonnes in 2009/10, a rise of 4 percent from the previous year.