Miller Magazine Issue: 145 January 2022

60 COVER STORY MILLER / january 2022 As the Roman philosopher Seneca puts it, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.” Nobody is immune to the end-of-the-year rush. At this time of year, we are all just big kids. It’s the famous San- ta-effect. This makes it the perfect time for wrapping up business matters and last-minute holiday shopping, leaving cash markets to drift in vacuum. But before we do so, let’s take a good look at the commodity mar- kets in general and the wheat market in particular. Leading wheat exporter Russia has been hit by a smaller crop and state grain export curbs in 2021. Russia's government has increased its grain export taxes for the last time in 2021, meaning that the Russian counterpart of Santa Claus – Grandfather Frost, or Ded Moroz – is not overly generous to the Russian grain buyers this holiday season. Fur- thermore, Russian Ministry recently published the quota for February 15 – June 30, 2022 amounting to 11 million tons of grain, including 8 million tons of wheat. Interestingly, Russian December wheat exports are currently estimated at almost half of that number, namely 3,9 million tons. Top destination for Russian wheat in December 2021 is Algeria with around 200,000 tons shipped there so far. The Russian success in Algeria could be one of the rea- sons behind the somewhat subdued end-of-the year cheer in the Matif milling wheat values. A couple of years ago the grain markets could have been touted as relatively flat and predictable. Nowadays industrial users around the globe, such as millers, animal feed compound producers, crushers and the like, are coping with unprecedented volatility, with grain prices sharply up this crop season. At the same time, prices of other com- modities are also moving higher, including energy, which affects production costs, as well as the price of farm inputs such as fertilizers and plant protection products. New beginning Grain markets at the start of 2022 Natalja Skuratovic Senior Sales Manager CIS CESCO EPC GmbH