KW Feedcast - 2 August 2022

Today’s episode of Feedcast is brought to you by James Barker and Jonathan Hanson from the KW buying and product teams. Today they are discussing the cereals markets around the world and how they continue to be affected by the global weather and the ongoing situation in Ukraine. 

The last two weeks has seen the markets continue to be choppy with the Chicago futures, French and London markets all seeing increases due to the ongoing Ukraine crisis. While the first boat has now left port, this good news doesn’t seem to have calmed down the prices. The situation is still turbulent and consequently the volatility still remains. 

Globally, the hot, dry weather is still the main story across Northern America and Europe. These conditions are affecting key crops at key growth stages for the plants. Of course a forecast is a forecast and changeable but this will add continued volatility to the market as we wait for harvest to see how badly the crops have been affected, over the course of the last week both the USDA and France have lowered the amount of good to excellent crops by 3% and 7% respectively. Interestingly while this has caused a fluctuation in prices in the corn and soya markets, ground maize is holding and may well offer a good opportunity now.

Rapemeal has also seen an increase over the last fortnight due to crushers being well sold, and the lower Rhine levels. Here the lack of rain has seen water levels fall, this means boats cannot fill as much as they like in Germany and has resulted in lower availability. As a result of this NovaPro and rape expeller are looking excellent value for summer and moving forward in to winter. 

From a fibre perspective we have not seen much movement with SugarBeet pricing remaining firm and soya hulls looking competitive against them.

It is worth also looking at your performance products. Gas prices have again reached around £5/therm, back to the highs at the start of the invasion. This will affect production costs and it is worth looking at these products now as the volatility is likely to remain for some time to come.

As always we are here to help if you need any further information, but keep watching the dips and take advantage of opportunities when you see them.