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Bangladesh buying bumps up Australia’s chickpea exports

Liz Wells, January 16, 2019

BUYING from Bangladesh has lifted Australia’s chickpea exports in November to their highest monthly level in three months, according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Bangladesh is a significant market for Australian chickpeas, where bags are put to good use once their contents have been consumed. Photo: Kate Marshall

Bangladesh took 17,518t of Australia’s November chickpea exports, or 65 per cent of the monthly total, with the United Arab Emirates on 3334t and Pakistan with 2544t the next biggest buyers.

While not as high as total August chickpea shipments of 28,456t, the November shipment figure chickpea is more than double the October tonnage, and up 88pc on the September amount.

Australian Choice Exports managing director James Hunt said Pakistan’s terms of trade had being eroded by its devalued currency, but it was still likely to join Bangladesh in buying Australian chickpeas for shipment up to February-March ahead of Ramadan.

“Pakistan will have some crop of their own in April, but we would still expect some more interest from Bangladesh and Pakistan,” Mr Hunt said.

South Asia’s monsoon season runs from July to September, and delivered below-average rainfall to key pulse-growing areas in India’s north.

While traders are hopeful India, traditionally Australia’s biggest chickpea market, will soon reopen to imports, the country is still busy consuming its own rabi, or winter, crop harvested last year.

Traders said new-crop Australian chickpeas were coming predominantly from Central Queensland, which had a much better season than southern Queensland and northern New South Wales.

New-crop chickpeas have been trading at up to $870/t delivered up-country packer, about $70/t more than chickpeas harvested in 2017.

Traders said stocks acquired by the now-defunct Special One Grain were helping to supply the old-crop market.

“Old-crop is coming from everywhere.”

Destination Sep Oct Nov Tonnes
Bangladesh 0 3991 17518 21510
Canada 618 716 917 2251
Fiji 24 0 23 47
India 119 0 237 357
Iran 0 121 0 121
Japan 21 0 0 21
Lebanon 3 0 0 3
Malaysia 22 72 0 94
Mauritius 98 100 25 223
Nepal 2164 1093 1310 4567
New Zealand 24 8 56 87
Pakistan 7718 3178 2544 13440
Papua New Guinea 1 0 0 1
Portugal 750 0 0 750
Singapore 24 0 0 24
South Africa 49 0 0 49
Spain 50 0 0 50
Sri Lanka 0 76 0 76
Thailand 24 0 24 48
United Arab Emirates 1858 70 3334 5263
United Kingdom 610 604 814 2028
USA 83 96 160 339
Yemen 75 0 0 75
TOTAL 14334 10125 26963 51422

Table 1: ABS data for Australia’s September, October and November 2018 chickpea exports.

 

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