CBH Group’s terminal at Geraldton in WA is one of the state’s five grain-shipping facilities in Australia’s major grain-exporting state.

AUSTRALIA exported 4.47 million tonnes (Mt) of wheat in the second half of 2018, according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Bulk customers took a total of 3.9Mt of wheat, with Indonesia on 705,679t, Iraq on 465,206t and Korea on 441,190t, only 2124t in front of Japan on 439,066t, the biggest volume buyers.

In the containerised market, a total of 568,512t was shipped, with Myanmar on 166,882t, The Philippines on 79,914t, Malaysia on 53,058t, and Taiwan on 40,892t the biggest customers.

Both bulk and boxed exports fell to their usual annual low in November, as old-crop stocks ran down while Australia’s current-crop harvest cranked up.

The 2H18 wheat-shipment figures is 40 per cent below the corresponding 2H17 period, when 7.5Mt was shipped.

“The ABS export numbers tell a story we knew was playing out through the back end of 2018, one of rationing supply as the 2018-19 crop deteriorated dramatically,” Market Check head of strategy Nick Crundall said.

“The key objective for our domestic market was to rally our prices to a point where our international customers were forced to go elsewhere for their requirements and hence increase our ending stocks to buffer the shortfall in production for this season.

“The inelasticity of our demand was tested as the spread between Aussie values and Black Sea blew out, with Indonesia, Iraq and Korea proving to be the ones willing to pay up for Aussie wheat.

“Even though our exports were down sharply in the second half of 2018 vs the year prior, we still exported nearly 14Mt in the 2017-18 season, which has left us in the tightest stocks position in modern times.”

Table 1: ABS bulk wheat export data for July to December 2018.

Table 2: ABS containerised wheat export data for July to December 2018.

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