Australia: Sales slow as harvest nears final quarter

up to $13 per tonne to reflect the surge of new-crop volume now that southern Australia’s harvest is in full swing. According to Digital Agri Services, Australia’s winter crop is around 72-percent harvested as of today, with barley roughly 75pc complete, wheat at around 67pc, with slow progress in the south dragging down the national average on cereals. Table 1: Indicative prices in Australian dollars per tonne. Chickpeas remain the big bulk mover out of Queensland ports, and also Newcastle, in this pre-Christmas period. While containerised high-protein wheat is being exported in reasonable volume, bulk sales of wheat generally remain thin. Feedlots and other consumers are chipping away on barley coverage, now extending into February for most to get them past the holiday period bookended by Christmas and Australia Day. Wheat for anything below Hard segregations remains difficult to sell. “On wheat, it would be hard to find a buyer for December,” one trader said of the domestic ...