Five Star Flour Mills is one of Egypt’s consumers of Australian wheat. Photo: Five Star Flour Mills

AUSTRALIA exported 1,299,756 tonnes of wheat in January, up 42 per cent from 917,603t shipped in December, and the biggest monthly volume shipped since July 2018.

The January figures were revealed in the latest wheat export data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), and show Australia’s biggest bulk customers in January were The Philippines on 314,695t, Indonesia on 148,493t and China on 102,149t.

In the containerised market, Egypt on 42,202t was the biggest buyer by far, unusual given that Egypt is usually a bulk customer.

Second and third place for boxed tonnage wheat to Malaysia on 13,008t and Myanmar on 12,035t, and the total for containers at 117,495t was the largest seen in 18 months.

“The Philippines continues to do the heavy lifting as exporters and importers take advantage of the import-tariff exemption for Aussie wheat,” Market Check head of strategy Nick Crundall said.

“We should see Chinese exports build as recent China purchases of our wheat filter through the export data.

“The January data further illustrates the strong export pace out of Australia, which is running at a record rate relative to our exportable surplus this season.

“It’s also worth keeping in mind that five-year seasonality shows our exports peak from March to May, so we could see bigger volumes over the next couple of months.”

Table 1: ABS Australian bulk wheat export data for November and December 2019 and January 2020.

Table 2: ABS Australian containerised wheat export data for November and December 2019 and January 2020.

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