French wheat exports rise but may miss targets

French wheat exports in May increased from April and showed stronger year-on-year growth than a month earlier, owing to rising shipments to Egypt, but they remain behind official projections required to meet 2021-22 targets.

French soft wheat exports to non-EU countries totalled 682,655t last month, according to preliminary line-up data, up from 666,100t in April and 465,361t a year earlier. This was also higher than the 451,140t shipped internationally in the past four weeks from 2 May to 29 May, according to provisional data from the European Commission.

Egypt was the primary importer of French soft wheat exports last month, taking 239,230t. Algeria closely followed Egypt, with receipts of 184,940t, while 146,700t were bound for Morocco. In contrast, no wheat exports were recorded to China last month.

But China remains the largest importer of French wheat on a cumulative basis since the start of the 2021-22 marketing year in July, with 1.9mn t shipped to the destination, followed by Algeria, with 1.6mn t, and Morocco, with 1.38mn t.

France’s non-EU soft wheat exports reached a combined 7.17mn t for July 2021-May 2022, according to vessel line-up data, compared with 7.33mn t estimated by the European Commission.

Sluggish exports earlier this year — in March in particular — mean France has shipped less wheat internationally so far in 2021-22 than during the same time a year earlier, despite the country’s production recovering over the same period. Non-EU wheat exports in July 2020-May 2021 totalled 7.34mn t, which was the lowest for the period since 2016-17.

France is expected to export 9.25mn t of soft wheat to non-EU countries in 2021-22, according to estimates by national agriculture and sea products agency FranceAgriMer. This implies that the country must export at least 2.08mn t of wheat in June, a volume that has never been reached during the period in the past 20 years. France’s June exports previously peaked in 2015-16, when they totalled 1.13mn t.

Tags: soft wheat, growth, China, exports, Egypt, France, wheat, shipments, Morocco