Australian Crop Update – Week 44, 2023

In the east of the country, harvest activity in Central Queensland (QLD) is nearly complete with receivals now focussed on the south of the state. New South Wales (NSW) is now well into harvest. 
 
Harvest deliveries are also advancing quickly in South Australia (SA). Most of the activity has been wheat and the rest barley, canola and pulses. Wheat proteins were high with more than half of the wheat deliveries reportedly making H2 11.0% so far in SA.
 
In the west, CBH received more than 1 million metric tonne (MMT) of grain deliveries in the past week, lifting the total harvest receivals to 1.7MMT. Harvest is advancing across all of Western Australia’s (WA) port zones now. Canola and barley have been the major grain deliveries so far. The canola harvest is well-advanced. Wheat proteins are reportedly well-up from last year’s low-protein season.

Australia exported 675,516 metric tonnes (MT) of chickpeas and a record 1,745,433MT of lentils in the year to September, according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Pakistan received 372,858MT totalling 55 percent (pc) of the annual shipments, indicating its transition from a containerised to a bulk market. Bangladesh received 128,833MT as the second-biggest market for 2022-23 chickpea shipments, followed by the United Arab Emirates on 63,230MT. India was the largest market for lentils with 47% of 2022-23 shipments, followed by Bangladesh on 261,259MT, and the United Arab Emirates on 178,199MT.

The shipping market continues to lack any confidence and as a result, the rates have continued to ease further across all sizes. Interestingly however, owners are yet to discount as severely for longer duration trips or legs/period as compared to quick Pacific rounds trips, which suggests that owners still have faith in the market recovering for the "usual" pre-Christmas fixing rush. In the Atlantic, rates have also eased over the past week. On a positive note, for the owners, bunkers have remained fairly stable over the past few weeks which is helping the voyage rates to ease gently rather than drop quickly. The market’s point of view hasn’t changed dramatically and is still generally lacking cargo to help reverse the current trend with only another 4/5 weeks left before the shipping market starts to shut for the Christmas holidays.
 
Barley remains the largest grain moving for exporters according to the shipping stem. A further 514KMT of barley was added to the stem in the past week. SA accounted for 287KMT, WA with 175KMT and Victoria (VIC) with 52KMT. There was 300KMT of wheat and 55KMT of canola put on the stem in the past week with most of this in WA. Recent wheat sales to China should start appearing on the stem as these were reportedly for a December shipment onwards.
 
In other notable news - Australia exported 1.49MMT of wheat in September lifting the Oct22 to Sep23 marketing year exports to 31.7MMT of wheat exports – a record.