Grain markets fell this week, but some showed signs of improvement towards the weekend.

360,000t of wheat are on their way to Egypt this April. 50% of this wheat will come from France, while the remaining 50% is divided equally between Russia, Ukraine and Romania.

The absence of US wheat from the list helps in some way to explain the dip in Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) futures this week.

This low US wheat price, as well as competitive prices from Russia, also contributed to a drop in the MATIF wheat price.

LIFFE

LIFFE wheat (March) closed at £165.55/t on Monday (February 18) and dropped as far as £162.55/t on Wednesday (February 20). It recovered somewhat on Thursday (February 21) to £164.70/t and remained at this price in Friday (February 22) afternoon.

MATIF

In a two week period MATIF wheat for March dropped by almost €10/t. On February 7, the price stood at €202.00/t. By Wednesday of this week (February 20) it had hit €192.75/t.

On a positive note it climbed back to €195.00/t on Thursday (February 21) and sat at €196.75/t on Friday (February 22) afternoon.

CBOT

CBOT wheat was similar. It dropped across the week, but recovered little by the weekend. Finishing at 504.25c/bu on Monday (February 18) it hit a low of 480.75c/bu on Wednesday (February 20), before reaching 486.50c/bu on Thursday (February 21).

FOB Creil (two-row malting barley)

The FOB (Free On Board) Creil price for two-row malting barley finished last week (February 15) at €181.00/t, dropped to €179.00/t on Tuesday (February 19) and recovered somewhat to €182.00/t on Wednesday (February 20).

This is down more than €10/t from the start of the month when it was trading at €192.50/t (February 1).