Egypt was the top destination for French soft wheat exports in December for the second month in a row, customs data showed on Friday. France has emerged as the leading supplier to Egypt's government wheat buyer this season as a slide in the euro has coincided with moves by rival supplier Russia to curb its exports and uncompetitive rates for US wheat.
France, the European Union's largest wheat producer and exporter, shipped just below 232,000 tonnes of soft wheat to Egypt during December. This took the volume exported to Egypt since the start of the 2014/15 marketing season on July 1 to almost 776,000 tonnes, more than four times the amount seen in the same period in 2013/14, the customs data showed.
Exporters have already sold 1.6 million tonnes of wheat to Egypt's state buyer GASC for shipment in 2014/15, or about 40 percent of the agency's purchases so far this season. French soft wheat exports to all destinations totalled 1.4 million tonnes in December. This brought the volume in the first six months of 2014/15 to 8.5 million tonnes, down 2 percent from the year-earlier period. Despite the run of sales to Egypt, French shipments outside the EU continued to lag last season's pace, with July-December shipments down 16 percent at 4.4 million tonnes.
A lower quality French wheat crop this season has hurt sales to some countries, notably traditional top client Algeria. French shipments to Algeria were down 50 percent so far this season but the northern African country remained the leading destination in July-December with 1.4 million tonnes shipped.
Traders have responded to the lower-quality French harvest by clinching rare sales to buyers of animal-feed wheat in Asia. The December customs data confirmed the shipment of a first significant volume of French wheat to Thailand in four years. Exports within the EU remained ahead of last season's pace, showing a 21 percent rise in the first half of the season to 4.1 million tonnes, the data showed.