Australia & China: Australia’s barley exports to China total 3.4 mln tonnes in October-April 2016/17
China has been the anchor in a massive export year for Australian barley, taking a whopping 3.4 million tonnes of the total 5.7 mln tonnes of barley shipped from October 2016 to April 2017, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) export data.
In April China took 205,680 tonnes of Australian barley to supply domestic customers including the dairy and other livestock sectors, and its malting and brewing industry.
More than 20 countries regularly import cargoes of barley from Australia, where malting and feed customers in destinations including Japan, Taiwan and the Gulf States have decades’ familiarity with Australia’s grain.
However, the free-on-board (FOB) price and freight costs impact on the competitiveness of Australian barley into another major volume market, Saudi Arabia, which imports around 10 mln tonnes per annum of feed.
ABS export data shows it has taken only 419,000 tonnes of Australian barley since October, a function of Australia’s inability to compete on price in optional-origin barley tenders, where Black Sea and Western European ports have prevailed.
Saudi, as with all Middle East destinations, buys barley to feed to livestock.
Compared with malting and food usage, feed barley quality parameters are not as stringent on factors such as colour, test weight and protein. Malting customers need to be able to germinate barley to convert it to malt.
Many of Australia’s buyers have long-established relationships with the barley industry, but none has such a prolific impact as the volume customer China.
Shipments of significant volume also went to Japan 146,000 tonnes, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia each 117,000 tonnes, Taiwan 80,000 tonnes and Sri Lanka 60,000 tonnes; a total of 801,050 tonnes of barley was exported in April.
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