As expected, U.S. corn exports were extremely high on the latest weekly U.S. Export Sales Report released Thursday.
Allendale commodity broker Greg McBride says corn sales were very strong at 4.48 million metric tons of old crop, reflecting China?s large purchases last week, with new crop coming in at 144,600 metric tons.
?Total 4.626 million tons for corn,? McBride said. ?We knew that was going to be a big one. We knew that China had signed up for about 3.9 million of that, and they actually snuck that last sale in that was reported on Friday into this (weekly) report. Very good report for corn. As far as how we played out versus expectations, everything was pretty much within expectations. Corn, beans, wheat, meal, oil and cotton were all within the range of estimates put out there by the media.?
On the soybean side, China will likely continue to shift export business to South America with the expansion of harvest and tight U.S. supplies. U.S. soybean exports this week slid lower to approximately 167,000 metric tons.
?Soybean sales were weak once again,? McBride said. ?102,000 tons for old crop and 65,000 tons for new crop, so a total of about 167,000 tons. Nothing huge. At this time of the year, we don?t expect many big sales of soybeans because that South American crop has come on-line and is shipping as we speak.?
McBride notes wheat sales were neutral at 414,000 metric tons.
?We look good for wheat,? he said. ?As we go into the end of the marketing year ? that comes up at the end of June ? we should be okay for wheat sales. Just like the corn and the beans, we?ve seen very good sales over the course of this last year.?
The next U.S. Export Sales Report will be released on Thursday, April 1st. The team at Allendale can be reached by calling 800-262-7538, or you can visit allendale-inc.com.
