Market Morsel: Wheat exports from Australia declining.
Market Morsel
We are coming to the final stretch of the Australian export program for 2024. So I thought it was a good time to have a look at what the country is exporting and who to export it to.
The first chart below shows the cumulative exports of Australian wheat from December to June, the most recent month where reliable data is available. During this period, we exported 1.35mmt of wheat. This is substantially below 2023, but that was a huge production year. It is closer to the long-term average.
In the second chart below, the seasonality of exports is shown. In this chart, we can see that exports are generally front-loaded to the start of the year, and then they decline. In May and June of this year, we have seen a much more pronounced fall in exports to well below average.
The third chart below shows the top ten export destinations representing 85% of our trade.
China is the big buyer of our wheat, which accounts for 23% of our trade volume, followed closely by Indonesia and the Philippines.
The fourth chart below shows the average FOB value for our exports, and we have seen a substantial decline in recent months, in line with falling pricing.
We are hearing that orders are currently slim. This could lead to higher end stocks as we move into harvest, but it is still quite a few months, and we don’t have to be too concerned yet.
