Corn commentary: Export sales outshine expectations

Corn futures were left behind Thursday, as the front month March contract saw a very modest quarter cent move by 18:00 London time to hold at slightly above the $3.67/bu level.

While that represents a fresh high for 2018, versus soybeans and wheat – from which so much of corn’s upward momentum has been inherited over the last month – the move was relatively underwhelming.

And that despite a better-than-anticipated corn export sales figure revealed in weekly USDA data, which accounted for nearly 2 million mt in the week ending February 8 – close to half a million mt higher than some analysts had been expecting.

The usual suspects were arrayed in the destination table, with Japan taking 453,000 mt, Mexico 258,000 mt and 200,000 mt to Colombia.

Of the Black Sea, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development announced a $50 million loan to Ukraine’s Nibulon to help bolster grain movements along the country’s river network, in the latest investment aimed at bolstering logistics.

The loan comes just as Nibulon unveils its new 43,000 mt transhipment terminal in Mykolaiv and is further evidence of the funding that is now aiming to address the bottlenecks of Ukraine’s logistics.

Currently, some 2 million mt of corn shipment utilises Ukraine’s river network, with the investment aiming to bolster that by a further 4 million mt.

Beyond that, the EU saw corn imports increasing – with Ukraine also at the epicentre of supply – as 209,399 mt were imported into the bloc in the week ending February 13.

Overall, this marketing year has already seen the EU import 10.45 million mt of corn – twice the volume seen at this point of the previous year.

Data from Argentina’s Rosario Grains Exchange suggests farmers have sold 6.5 million mt of the new corn crop forward, with only 1 million mt currently committed for export, versus an historical average of 5.5 million mt at this time of year.

Staying with the country, Argentina saw 31,066 mt in export licenses released on February 14, with CHS taking 30,000 mt out of the 2017/18 marketing year, according to government data.

Thursday’s data showed a further 25,000 mt added to that total, with Molina pulling from the 2017/18 marketing year.