Russian grain prices showed no clear trend last week in quiet trade ahead of the long holiday and stormy weather at key export ports, analysts said. Ordinary milling wheat with bug damage of 1 percent lost around $2 per tonne, declining to an estimated $190 per tonne FOB Novorossiisk, the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies (IKAR) said.
The same type of wheat with bug damage of 1.5 percent also declined by $2 to an estimated $183 per tonne. Feed barley was stable at $130 per tonne. High quality wheat with 13.5 percent protein was estimated at $170 per ton at Azov ports, it said.
SovEcon agricultural analysts said average domestic feed wheat prices rose by 50 roubles ($1.66) per tonne to 3,125 roubles per tonne, while feed barley added 100 roubles to 2,475 per tonne. Market players said exporters kept buying Siberian wheat not damaged by bugs.
Grain exports in the first 20 days of December exceeded 1.10 million tonnes compared to 1.16 million tonnes a year ago, as volumes declined in the last two weeks due to bad weather in the Black and Azov seas region, IKAR said. It said that the governnment's plans to start massive exports of grain from its intervention stocks could damage highly fragile Russian export prices.
But SovEcon said that it did not expect exports to start immediately and did not believe their volumes to be high. Sunseed purchase prices rose to $447 per tonne from $417, soybeans to $517 from $509 and rapeseed to $367 from $345, IKAR said. SovEcon said sunseed prices rose by 425 roubles to 13,000 roubles per tonne, while crude sunoil rose by 575 roubles to 29,575 roubles per tonne.