New Delhi: Indian flour millers and global trading companies have sewn up deals to import 500,000 tonnes of premium Australian wheat since March, trade sources said, the biggest such purchases in more than a decade despite surplus stocks at home. Concerns that untimely rains in February and March would cut wheat output, especially of high-protein varieties used to make pizzas and pasta, first drove millers in India’s southern ports to place the orders.
Attractive prices then prompted traders such as Cargill, Louis Dreyfus and Glencore to follow, said three sources directly involved in the deals. The traders and millers could import a further 500,000 tonnes from France and Russia, where harvests are around the corner. The deals could push up benchmark prices that have already jumped on recent concerns about crop quality in the US.
“There are strong chances that French and Russian wheat will find their way to India because of attractive prices ... and if the euro goes down, I expect more French wheat coming to India,” a source said. Almost half of the quantity contracted so far bought at $255 to $275 a tonne has reached India and the rest is scheduled for July delivery, said the sources on anonymity.
Although rains and hailstorms wilted the Indian wheat crop, the world’s second-biggest producer and consumer of the grain has large stockpiles accumulated after eight straight years of bumper harvests.But the Centre is likely to draw heavily from its warehouses this year if monsoon rains, critical for irrigation, turn out to be deficient.
