Friday, 10 July 2015 00:47
PARIS: European wheat futures rose slightly on Thursday as a bounce in Chicago markets helped Paris prices recover from a one-week low while participants awaited direction from U.S. government crop estimates due on Friday.
Harvest progress in France, coupled with a relatively high crop forecast from the country’s farm office, helped keep a lid on prices, although there were still concerns that dry, hot weather may affect later-maturing wheat.
December milling wheat, the new-crop benchmark and most active contract on Euronext, settled 1.25 euros or 0.6 percent higher at 198.50 euros a tonne.
It earlier dipped to 197.00 euros to equal one-week lows hit on Wednesday before recovering in step with U.S. wheat.
“The early stages of the French harvest are going well and farmers are tending to sell. The market should be easing on that but Euronext wheat is behaving like Chicago and reacting to the rebound in Chinese markets,” one futures dealer said.
Investor worries about tumbling Chinese stock prices, along with uncertainty about Greece’s debt crisis, had weighed on grains as on other commodities earlier in the week.
Grain markets were also building up to monthly supply-and-demand forecasts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Friday, with attention on U.S. corn and soybean supply in the wake of a rain-disrupted planting season.
In France, farm office FranceAgriMer forecast a soft wheat crop of 37.9 million tonnes, up 1 percent from 2014 and in line with a farm ministry estimate earlier this week.
The harvest was 15 percent complete by July 6, it said, noting however that crop conditions had declined again last week in the light of hot, dry weather.
In west coast wheat belts, which supply early-season French exports, yields were in line with last year, one cash broker said. In quality terms, specific weights were high but protein results mixed, although they were enough to meet the 11 percent minimum for milling wheat markets, he added.
In exports, the European Union granted licences to export 467,000 tonnes of soft wheat in its first weekly award for the 2015/16 season that began on July 1, data showed.
Cheaper prices for Black Sea origins, as shown in tenders held by Egypt and Tunisia this week, were curbing export sentiment in western Europe, traders said.
