Japanese and Korean buyers of premium noodle wheat from Australia face the risk of shortages as dry weather slashes wheat production in Australia's top grain export state, a leading noodle wheat exporter said on Thursday. CBH Group said noodle wheat was a niche market where supply needed to be carefully managed in low production years.
Western Australia's wheat harvest is expected to more than halve to around 3.9 million tonnes in 2010/11 from last season's 8.2 million tonnes, according to CBH. Noodle wheat typically accounts for 13-14 percent of the state's wheat crop, suggesting this year's harvest will be less than 550,000 tonnes. CBH wheat marketing manager Tom Puddy said Japanese and South Korean customers required around 800,000 tonnes of noodle wheat a year, all of which is sourced from Western Australia.
"It is going to be a tight supply situation but it can be managed as we don't want to disrupt key markets," said Puddy. "Noodle wheat is a specific quality and can't be sourced from other countries such as the United States." he added. The supply shortfall will be partly be made up from stocks left over from the previous harvest. ANZ Banking Group this week estimated Western Australia's wheat stocks at September 30 totalled 1.7 million tonnes, up from 800,000 tonnes a year earlier, giving the state some buffer against the expected plunge in production in 2010/11.