Australia: Australian barley prices feeling some downward pressure

With harvesting advancing, barley prices are feeling some downward pressure, and for malting barley, Australia remains the cheapest origin globally, RMI Analytics said in their early November report.

Between the regions, the east-coast is holding a premium over Western Australia, despite the very good early yield and quality results in Queensland and New South Wales. A part of this price relationship relates to the expected poorer results in drought and frost impacted regions (as noted above). For east-coast maltsters, the flow of malting barley from crop’24 will differ from crop’23, due to the final quality result.

Both malting and feed barley prices are feeling increasing competitive pressure from Canada and Argentina (but less so from France). From an analytical perspective, RMI’s Barley Price Model continues to view price direction for Australia malting barley going forward to be upwards, particularly once harvest is completed and harvest pressure on prices subsides.