EU: Malting barley markets worrying about weather impact on crops
The EU malting barley market is having lots of discussions in regards to when the farmer in the main European areas will be able to enter the field again. Forecast for next week is still calling for very chilly temperatures Sunday through Tuesday, and again snow and rain for early/mid of next week, GrainCom reported on March 16.
It is clear already right now that the seeding will not finish in the ideal window, the analysts warned.
FranceAgriMer reported that 35% of spring barley has been seeded. Farmers from the main areas are reporting lower percentages, though. They also rate the condition of the winter malting barley in France at 78% good/excellent (vs 79% last week).
The UK and Scandinavia are cold and wet as well.
Brewers priced some malt, and maltsters triggered some LTA’s with the farming groups over the last couple of weeks, and as they could not fix any quantities with the farmers, they were trying to get some coverage from the commercials, so prices went a bit up at the end of the current week amid little liquidity.
Malting barley prices for the old crop have been mostly unchanged, with the problematic spot/March positions being taken care of, and now we see some industry interest for these spot ‘cheap’ offers, but they are gone.
The feed barley market is still firm with demand already pushing into the new crop positions from the EU and Black Sea. Prices moved up on decent export business. The GrainCom analysts estimate that 6-8 cargos of EU/Black Sea feed barley were sold into China for July/early September positions.
The EU 2017/2018 barley exports reached 3.9 mln tonnes as of March 13th (vs 3.7 mln tonnes last year), it is reported.
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