Monday Market Briefing - 24th July 2023
The Black Sea Corridor - which permits safe passage of grain cargoes from Ukraine – reached its expiry date last Monday and was not renewed as Russia walked away. This was dismissed as mere posturing, if you want to make a point the slack period between two harvests is the best time to do it, and markets ended Monday unchanged, but the bombing of the main storage facility in the Port of Odessa was another matter. Destroyed infrastructure is not so easily rectified and this will have a serious impact on an important Ports capabilities for the time being.
Ukraine has had more than a year now to ramp up its export capacities through other routes which is partly why the market is not as reactive to these events as it was in 2022, nevertheless we had a wildly fluctuating week briefly showing +£21 before ending up at +£10 on LIFFE which farmers across Europe (and beyond as well) saw as a selling opportunity. Its difficult to predict what lies ahead this week. Without fresh military action the market probably slides as farmer selling struggles to be met by current levels of demand, but the prospects for a quiet week in the warzone are not great and we’ve seen what the market consequences of significant action can be.
Harvest accelerated at home as everyone rushed to grab what they could ahead of the forecast rain. We saw a bit of everything done, including some spring barleys. Widely varying maturity dates is a striking feature with many crops still some way off but others ready. That variability is also reflected in early results with wheat proteins all over the place – yields pretty healthy on the whole. A 12 hour spell of continuous rain on Saturday heralded the arrival of a much wetter week ahead so we wait to see how the main crop fairs after these weather systems pass through.
Our sampling team are all up to speed and it might be a good idea to get them in and check over whatever you have in the barn before its buried behind the next intake. Give the Office a call to book a visit.
Have a good week.
