Russian wheat prices stable amid high exports

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian wheat prices were stable last week amid high exports and risks to grain exports from Ukraine's ports, analysts said on Monday, before Russia's withdrawal at the weekend from a deal allowing Ukrainian shipments.

Prices for Russian wheat with 12.5% protein content and for supply from Black Sea ports were at $312 a tonne free on board (FOB) on Friday evening, unchanged from a week earlier, the IKAR agriculture consultancy said in a note.

Russia's grain exports fell to 910,000 tonnes last week from 1.06 million tonnes a week earlier, the Sovecon consultancy said, citing port data.

Sovecon expects Russia's grain exports to rise in October compared with the previous month.

"Despite the overall favourable market environment it is hard to expect that Russia could continue increasing exports substantially. The lack of railcars remains a substantial bottleneck," Sovecon said.

Farmers have already planted winter grains on 16.7 million hectares, compared with 17.6 million hectares around the same date a year ago, the consultancy said.

Overall weather conditions remain fine for development of the winter crops, but the southern regions are a bit dry, Sovecon added.

Other Russian data provided by Sovecon and IKAR:

Product: Price at the end Change from week

of last week: earlier

- Domestic 3rd class 12,600 rbls/t -75 rbls

wheat, European part ($203.9)

of Russia, excludes

delivery (Sovecon)

- Sunflower seeds 21,450 rbls/t unchanged

(Sovecon)

- Domestic sunflower 73,675 rbls/t +1,000 rbls

oil (Sovecon)

- Domestic soybeans 30,150 rbls/t +250 rbls

(Sovecon)

- Export sunflower $1,320/t +$30

oil (Sovecon)

- Export sunflower $1,190/t +$20

oil (IKAR)

- White sugar, $790.4/t -$6.3

Russia's south

(IKAR)

Harvesting data provided by Sovecon as of October 27:

All grains: Wheat Barley Corn Sunseeds

Crop, mln tonnes 149.7 104.6 24.4 5.9 10.1

Crop, as of same 119.0 77.8 18.7 10.0 14.0

date in 2021

Yield, 3.34 3.59 3.09 5.55 1.83

tonnes/hectare

Yield, as of same 2.70 2.81 2.39 5.32 1.61

date in 2021

Harvested area, 44.9 29.1 7.9 1.1 5.5

mln hectares

Harvested area, 44.1 27.7 7.8 1.9 8.7

as of same date

in 2021

* Russia's agriculture ministry has yet to publish harvesting data in detail for the current season.

** The harvesting data is by bunker weight, i.e. before drying and cleaning of the crop.

($1 = 61.8000 roubles)

(Reporting by Olga Popova and Polina Devitt; Editing by David Goodman)