By: Editorial Team, StoneX Media
Algeria bought around 500,000 tonnes of milling wheat in a single tender and took none of it from the Black Sea. The purchase went to Romanian, Bulgarian and potentially Baltic sellers for November delivery, and the volume may yet prove larger. With Ukrainian and Russian shipments both running behind last year, the tender showed how quickly origin risk can redirect physical trade.
Bertrand Oesterle is Vice President of Clearing and Execution Sales at StoneX Financial Ltd in London, where he works with institutional and commercial clients on futures clearing and execution across global listed derivatives markets. He follows commodity markets spanning grains and oilseeds, and he contributes to StoneX market intelligence covering the export flows, tenders and crop data that move wheat and corn.
"Interestingly, they didn't buy any Black Sea. They bought Romanian, Bulgarian and potentially Baltic." That is how Bertrand Oesterle described the make-up of Algeria's latest milling wheat tender, which covered roughly 500,000 tonnes for November delivery and could grow. The absence of Russian and Ukrainian cargoes in a purchase of that size is a signal about how importers are pricing shipment risk rather than headline value. Egypt also intervened politically, with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi calling on Ukraine and Russia to deliver certainty of supply, and as Oesterle put it, "when the number one importer of wheat speaks, obviously the exporters should listen". For commercial buyers, the practical read is that alternative European origins are now absorbing volume that would previously have loaded in the Black Sea.
Ukraine has exported around 2 million tonnes of wheat so far this season, compared with 4 million tonnes at the same point last year, and Russian September loadings are estimated at 1.6 to 1.8 million tonnes against 4.6 million tonnes a year earlier. The reason sits in the physical risk attached to loading and shipping, which diplomacy has not removed. Oesterle notes that despite talk of trilateral discussions and a possible ceasefire covering energy facilities, "vessels are still being hit, ports are still being hit, and grain infrastructures are still being hit". Consequently, buyers face an origin where volume, timing and vessel availability all carry an additional layer of uncertainty. That uncertainty, more than any single data release, is what is steering tender business toward Romanian, Bulgarian and Baltic sellers.
Morocco has started the first tranche of its subsidy program that runs for the next two weeks, until the end of the month, adding a second North African buyer. Demand had softened earlier, evidenced by a U.S. Department of Agriculture report showing world wheat stocks up by 3 million tonnes, which pointed to buyers holding back through the period of greatest uncertainty. Renewed tender activity changes that picture, and the quality specification is the detail worth tracking. According to Oesterle, "we are waiting to see if they come to market and if it is for high protein wheat, as we expect". A high protein requirement would concentrate demand on a narrower set of origins, tightening the competition for the specific cargoes that suit it.
--- Written by Frédéric Guétin, StoneX Media Producer
--- Expert: Bertrand Oesterle, StoneX VP of Clearing & Execution Sales
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