The Black Sea region continues covering the increasing share of the global grain market, and already became the 3rd largest region by wheat production, and the 5th one — by corn production, reported the Grains Pricing Specialist at EMEA S&P Global Platts, Karim El Afany, during his report within frames of the international conference Middle East Grains&Oils Congress-2020, on March 3.
For 20 recent years, Russia demonstrated the active growth rates of the planted areas under wheat — up 28%, as well as Ukraine — up 37%. Also, the grain yield figures increased by 67% and 108%, respectively.
As for the current season, Russia still remained the largest exporter of wheat for the third running season, but somewhat reduced the shipment on foreign markets to 34 mln tonnes (down 5% per year), despite the second maximum grain harvest in the contemporary history (73.5 mln tonnes). Thus, in the first half of the current season Russia reduced wheat exports by 16% y-o-y, mainly due to the reduced demand from Egypt, in terms of the high competition rates in GASC tenders. If in 2018/19 MY, the share of Russian wheat in the Egyptian tenders totaled 59%, then in the current season the figures reached — 53%, the expert said.
In turn, in the current MY Ukraine broke both records of the production (29 mln tonnes; up 16% y-o-y) and exports (20.5 mln tonnes; up 28%). Moreover, the country continues increasing its presence in Egyptian tenders, and in 2019/20 MY the share of the Ukrainian grain already totaled 19%, against 8% last season.
As for corn, in the current season Ukraine can export the record high volumes — 31 mln tonnes, with the harvest of 35.8 mln tonnes. For the first 7 months, the country already exported 61% of the forecasted volumes of corn (19 mln tonnes). The main supplies were provided to the EU, Egypt and China.
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