Miller Magazine Issue: 156 December 2022

84 ARTICLE MILLER / DECEMBER 2022 Natalja Skuratovic Senior Sales Manager CIS CESCO EPC GmbH Black Friday, which traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season, this year has potential to become a meaningful phenomenon in grains too. Let us have a look why. Black Friday also in the grain markets The past few weeks have been incredibly volatile in the grain markets with many different drivers and lots of changes to keep things interesting, and to keep the market players on their toes. Politics and weather invariably remain the main focus in the grain markets and impact the trading sentiment. Center stage today is played out between the immediate availability of Black Sea wheat as well as the outlook for the months to come due to its impact on the world S&D. The confirmation of the prolongation of the ‘grain deal’ by Russia for another 120 days extending on paper the export corridor for Ukrainian grain without changes in the terms has managed to ease the sentiment in the market, however, the ensuing black- outs in the Ukrainian ports, which remain for the most part inoperable due to the recent massive shelling by Russian troops of gas and electricity infrastructure across the coun- ty, spiked immediate concerns about the actual availability of Ukrainian grain through the ports. Over 3 million tons of Ukrainian wheat, 4 million tons of Ukrainian corn and close to 10 million tons of all grain and oilseed products which have been shipped through this corridor, have eased the pressure on the global wheat balance sheet while placating the imme- diate demand with increased availability of Ukrainian grains and oilseeds. However, time will show how much will be physically exported and for how long. Today it is still unclear what will happen upon the expiration of this extension. What is clear at this moment, is that the queue of vessels in the Bosphorus albeit down from its peak, is not far from 100 vessels, some of which have been waiting for over a month. Current average waiting time in the Bosphorus is around 20 days inbound (although some of the vessels in the queue have been waiting for over a month), and around 5 days out- bound. This makes freight calculations tremendously expen- sive and contributes to high CNF prices at destination. Mother Nature added fuel to the proverbial fire resulting in the extreme volatility ravaging grain markets. It is hard to re- main optimistic about the estimated Argie grain production numbers while approximately three quarters of the corn will be planted late and the weather conditions for the late-plant- ed corn is yet to be determined knowing that late planted corn usually yields 10-15% less than early planted corn. Same goes for the wheat, where current crop estimates do not ex- ceed 11-12 million tons, meaning that there will be no aggres-