China buys hefty 150,000 mt Australian wheat for Dec 2019, Jan 2020 loading: brokerage

China has booked 150,000 mt of wheat from Western Australia for December 2019 and January 2020 loading, Andrew Woodhouse, an advisor at Advance Trading, a commodity brokerage firm, told S&P Global Platts Friday. This compares with the 170,000 mt China had imported over October 2018-September 2019, Woodhouse said.

Another eight ships, or 250,000 mt, out of a total of 400,000 mt of Australian wheat was reported to have been booked, likely for January-February loading, market sources said, but details could not be confirmed.

According to cFlow, Platts trade-flow software, and as confirmed by Woodhouse, the 150,000 mt of wheat will be shipped via three ships loading from ports in Western Australia.

Market sources said that state-owned China Oil and Foodstuffs Corporation was potentially the buyer of the cargoes, but COFCO declined to comment.

The first vessel, Lucky Life, loaded from Kwinana on December 27, 2019, transporting 24,000 mt of wheat to Lianyungang, in northeastern China.

The second vessel, Aeolian Arrow, carrying 66,000 mt of wheat, which loaded from Esperance and Albany on December 30, 2019, headed for Guangdong in southeast China.

The third vessel, Nord Barents, had loaded 60,000 mt of wheat also from Albany and Esperance on January 17 and its destination is Dongjiakou port in Shandong.

The suppliers of the three vessels were CBH Group and Glencore Australia, according to Woodhouse, but this could not be confirmed.
Source: Platts