European Union Soft Wheat Export Licenses Fall 23% (Table)

By Rudy Ruitenberg

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The European Union, the world’s largest wheat producer, issued export licenses for 388,000 metric tons of soft wheat in the seven days through Feb. 24, down 23 percent from the previous week’s 507,000 tons.

Export certificates for durum wheat jumped more than fivefold to 73,000 tons from 13,000 tons, according to data published via the bloc’s online documentation service.

Total wheat export certificates in the first 35 weeks of the crop year through June were 15.4 million tons, including 991,000 tons of durum wheat, compared with 5.06 million tons a year earlier, the figures showed.

European Union commercial grain export licenses, cumulative total in thousands of metric tons:

                         Soft
                        Wheat     Durum     Barley    Corn
Crop year 2008-09
Week 35, Feb. 18-24     14,390      991      3,047    1,266
Crop year 2007-08
Week 35, Feb. 20-26      4,495      562      3,258      276

    European Union grain import commitments, cumulative total
in thousands of metric tons:

                        Soft
                        Wheat     Durum     Barley    Corn
Crop year 2008-09
Week 35, Feb. 18-24     4,629       644        216    2,681
Crop year 2007-08
Week 35, Feb. 20-26     3,994     1,515         78    9,296

(Source: EU)

To contact the reporter on this story: Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris at rruitenberg@bloomberg.net