Five trucks wait their turn to unload chickpeas for transfer on to an export vessel at the Wagner wharf at Pinkenba, one of Brisbane’s four grain-export points. Photo: JSM Bulk Shipping

AUSTRALIA exported 780,917 tonnes of chickpeas and 239,900t of lentils in December, according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The chickpea figure has lifted exported for the first quarter of the shipping year to 1.3 million tonnes (Mt), with the currently tariff-free Indian market accounting for close to 1Mt of that.

On December shipments, India on 589,198t was the destination for 75 percent of the month’s chickpea exports, with Bangladesh on 136,875t and Pakistan on 33,697t the second and third-biggest markets respectively.

Port of Brisbane was the departure point for more than 300,000t of bulk chickpeas in December, the organisation stated in its January edition of Port News.

Australia’s December chickpea exports were up 88pc from November, and the November figure was more than quadraple the October amount.

The surge reflects Indian demand ahead of the expected reinstatement of the tariff in April, and the availability of a big and good-quality Australian chickpea crop which growers were happy to sell for cash at harvest.

On lentils, the December total exported was a more than five-fold increase on the November, again reflecting new-crop availability, and buoyant demand for a relatively low-volume Victorian and South Australian crop, the result of a low-rainfall growing season.

Australia’s main customers for December-shipped lentils were India on 114,365t, Bangladesh on 81,854t, and the United Arab Emirates on 25,727t.

Table 1: Australian chickpea exports for October, November and December 2024. Source: ABS

Table 2: Australian lentil exports for October, November and December 2024. Source: ABS

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