China eases wheat quality terms for rain-hit French crop

PARIS: Chinese buyers have agreed to relax a key quality specification for upcoming shipments of French wheat in response to rain damage in France’s harvest, traders familiar with the matter said.

France, the European Union’s biggest grain producer, has become a significant supplier of wheat to China in the past two years due to fluctuating trade relations between Beijing and other suppliers as well as a Chinese push to replenish grain stocks.

Test weights are a common measure of milling quality, determining how much flour can be extracted from a certain volume of wheat.

Chinese importers will now accept readings of 75 kgs (165 lb) per hectolitre, compared with a 77 kg minimum initially required for these import deals, the traders in Europe and Asia said.

Fellow wheat importers Algeria and Saudi Arabia have also eased test weight requirements in response to weak results in France and other European countries following heavy rain.