The Good, Bad & Ugly

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The Good: Canadian wheat exports in week eight were very strong at 841,800 tonnes which pushed total exports in the crop year to date to 3.15 million tonnes. The wheat export pace is 471,400 tonnes ahead of last year at this time. This is the strongest export wheat export pace since the 3.22 million tonnes shipped during the 2018-19 crop year. Exports were mostly from the West Coast with Vancouver terminals shipping 492,600 tonnes and Prince Rupert accounting for 61,800 tonnes. Shipments from Thunder Bay were 42,800 tonnes while St Lawrence shipments were 203,400 tonnes. Primary elevators shipped only 1,900 tonnes. The good news is that 538,500 tonnes of wheat were delivered into the primary elevator system which means that the system is primed for another strong week of exports in week nine.

The Bad: Canola closed the day down by C$8.80 per tonne to settle at C$605 per tonne. This is the third consecutive week of losses in the canola market. The bad news is that the canola market has been in a significant downtrend over the past 16 weeks. Canola futures did bounce off of the C$600 per tonne level this week but it appears that canola is still destined to test the March lows of C$580 per tonne.

The Ugly: Canola exports remained slow last week at 88,100 tonnes, which pushed the crop year to date total to only 715,600 tonnes. This is 1.05 million tonnes behind last year’s pace but still ahead of the pace set in 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24. Export forecasts remain lower than last year at 7.0 to 7.1 million tonnes, but the current pace is not sufficient to reach that total. The export pace needs to nearly double in order to meet the current export projections. Canola exports last week were all from Vancouver terminals. The ugly news is that canola exports are unlikely to recover quickly as only 94,400 tonnes were instore in Vancouver terminals. The slow pace of exports continues to be the lack of demand from China which will remain a drag on prices.