Saudi Arabia's main state wheat-buying agency, the Saudi Grains Organization (SAGO), has issued an international tender to purchase 1.5 million tonnes of animal feed barley, it said on Thursday. The tender deadline is February 3 and the result is expected to be announced early on February 6. The barley is sought from global suppliers for shipment from March to May, SAGO Governor Ahmad Al Fares said in a statement. The tender is seeking 25 individual consignments of 60,000 tonnes. The consignments can be up to 10 percent larger or smaller, SAGO said.
Some 1.2 million tonnes will be distributed between Saudi Arabia's Red Sea ports and 300,000 tonnes will be shipped to Arabian Gulf ports. Traders said they suspected that European Union barley would be the origin selected in the tender. "I think Germany and other Baltic Sea region countries are likely to be the favourites," one European trader said. "The Black Sea region's ports could still be having problems with ice in March so logistics would be difficult to organise there.
"Australia has the barley but does not seem to have enough free shipment slots in ports to handle the volume. There have been some individual cheap trades of Argentine barley, but I suspect Argentine supplies are not competitive in such large volumes." The agency, previously known as the General Silos and Flour Mills Organization (GSFMO), was assigned the task of securing feed barley for Saudi Arabia in September 2016. In its first barley tender on December 5, SAGO bought 945,000 tonnes.