Indian mills bought 100,000 tonnes of new-crop Australian wheat in recent deals for January shipment, while Chinese corn has yet to make inroads into Asia due to its higher prices relative to other sources, traders said on Thursday. Indian flour mills paid $216 a tonne, including cost and freight, for Australian standard wheat and $223 a tonne for premium wheat, two trade sources said.
India has been snapping up wheat shipments in the past several weeks, largely from Australia and Ukraine, to ease tight domestic supplies after two years of lower output. Corn from China, which has been trying to sell about two million tonnes, has yet to make any headway into Asia. "There are talks about Chinese corn coming in but prices need to do some more work for shipments to become competitive," said one Singapore-based grains trading manager at an international trading company.
Chinese corn into Southeast Asia is being priced around $220 a tonne, including cost and freight, as compared with $200 a tonne offered for South American corn shipping into Vietnam. China has given approval to at least two companies to export corn, trading sources said, in a move by the world's No 2 producer to cut its ballooning surplus and unleash more supply on to a saturated global market.
China will suspend auctions from it state corn reserves to encourage purchases of new crop corn, it National Grain Trade Center said on Thursday. Indonesia's state food procurement agency Bulog is due to finalise an international tender it had issued last week to purchase 150,000 to 200,000 tonnes of corn, traders said. "We have heard it is almost done," said another trader in Singapore.