Australia: 2024/25 barley exports second-largest on record

The Australian grain marketing season runs from October to September each year, and with the release of the nation’s September export data by the Australian Bureau of Statistics late last week, the curtain is drawn on yet another successful grain shipment program, Grain Central reported on November 11.

Following a recovery in grain output from the 2024/25 harvest compared to the previous season came a rebound in the total export volume of the four major commodities: wheat, barley, sorghum and canola. Although canola shipments did let the team down, lagging the previous season’s total.

Total exports, bulk and containerised, of the big four in the 2024/25 season ended up at 39.62 million tonnes (Mt), up from 35.87Mt the previous season. This is Australia’s third-highest export volume on record, behind the 47.76Mt shipped in 2022/23 and the 43.22Mt exported in 2021/22.

Unsurprisingly, China was the biggest destination with 9.42Mt, or 23.79 percent of the nation’s total grain export volume. However, this did drop from 11.81Mt or 28.97pc of the 2023/24 program. China’s imports of barley were almost unchanged at 6.03Mt, equivalent to an average of 500,000 tonnes per month. The volume of sorghum increased by just over 400,000t to 2.34Mt. Wheat was the big loser, falling 72pc, or 2.7Mt, from 3.76Mt to just 1.05Mt on the back of a significant drop in total Chinese wheat import demand.

National barley exports, malting and feed, were close to record pace in the first half but died away late in the season to finish on 8.13Mt sold to 27 individual destinations globally. This is the second-largest barley shipping program on record, behind the massive 2016/17 season achievement of 9.16Mt, when China took over 6.3Mt.

Beijing’s appetite for Australian barley may have waned early this decade due to political reasons, but it has bounced back to over 6Mt in each of the past two seasons, after import restrictions were dropped in July 2023. Shipments to China accounted for 73.1pc of the total barley program last season, down from 77.5Mt in 2023/24. Japan maintained its second-place ranking with 7.2pc of the barley shipments, but its proportion dropped from 11pc a season earlier. Saudi Arabia came in third on the list on 4.8pc, followed by Mexico on 3.2pc.