The largest ever wheat cargo to depart CBH Group’s Albany terminal loaded earlier this month and with its hatches carrying 57,400t is now on its way to China. Photo: Garry Newbey, CBH

AUSTRALIA exported 1.02 million tonnes of wheat in March, up from 798,178t shipped in February, according to the latest export data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

March wheat exports came in at just over 1Mt to make it the biggest shipping month after January in the current crop year.

“A similar theme played out as previous months, with China doing the heavy lifting,” Market Check head of strategy Nick Crundall said.

In bulk markets, China on 364,025t, followed by South Korea with 138,880t, Yemen on 56,906t and The Philippines on 46,142t were the four biggest markets.

“In terms of top destinations for the season, The Philippines and China are neck and neck at 756,000t and 700,000t respectively, followed by Korea, Indonesia and Japan.

“China will take top position over the coming months as its volumes are rising faster than The Philippines if we look at shipping stem data.”

In container markets, Myanmar, China and Thailand took the bulk of the tonnage.

“In terms of looking forward, we will see a decline in overall volumes for April, but not by much as exports remained firm through last month.”

In mid March, the Australian dollar fell to its lowest level in 12 years, and trade sources said this prompted a flurry of export business to be written.

Most of that business is expected to be executed by mid-June ahead of new-crop wheat being available from Black Sea ports.

Table 1: ABS containerised wheat export data for October-December 2019 and January-March 2020.

Table 2: ABS bulk wheat export data for October-December 2019 and January-March 2020.