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Australia grain: Shipping active, record load looms

SYDNEY: Australia's wheat shipping programme is in full swing with the national exporter preparing to load its biggest-ever single shipment in the next week or so.

AWB Ltd last Friday had exported just over six million tonnes since the beginning of the shipping year on October 1, slightly less than the 6.29 million tonnes exported at the same time in 1998/99, another big year.

"Things are very busy," AWB's spokeswoman said.

After moving almost 300,000 tonnes of wheat in the past week, AWB is still finalising the big shipment to Iraq.

The exporter could load up to 130,000 tonnes on the 135,000 deadweight tonne Prima 2, which will be loaded in Port Kembla, south of Sydney, in the next couple of weeks.

"It's a very busy shipping period coming up," the AWB spokeswoman said.

Iraq this year will be possibly Australia's biggest wheat customer, after AWB's sale of 900,000 tonnes to the country two weeks ago. This brought Australia's total sales of new crop wheat to Iraq to 2.1 million tonnes since September.

The 1.27 million tonnes of wheat which Australia sold to Iraq in the 1998/99 shipping year ended September 30 last made it AWB's fourth-largest market, after Iran, on 1.66 million tonnes, Egypt and Indonesia.

Iraq is expected to buy 1.3-1.5 million tonnes of wheat under the latest UN oil-for-food deal, which began in December.

Australia normally supplies about 50 percent of the country's wheat.

AWB also said on Friday that it had sold 55,000 tonnes of wheat to Sri Lanka in that country's latest tender at an unspecified but "good" price.

"Business as usual, they're all very busy," the spokeswoman said.

AWB sees the next possible big tender coming from Pakistan, if the country decides to re-enter the market.

It remains unclear whether Pakistan will stay return to buy more wheat or stay away, after an apparent split within government on the issue.

Agriculture Minister Shafqat Jamote said earlier this month the government had no plans to import any more wheat this fiscal year, which ends in June, despite approval to import an additional 700,000 tonnes.

Since last July Pakistan has imported 1.6 million tonnes of wheat, 1.2 million from Australia and 400,000 tonnes from the United States.-Reuters