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Orion Farming Group Weekly Straights Update: 9th January 2025

The figures in the charts are an indication only and reflect levels traded on Wednesday.

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Hipro Soya

Prices moved up over the festive period, before giving back some of the gains this week as the trade returned.
Prior to Christmas, the market took an upward turn as a fire at a crush plant in the US looked like a bullish factor, thankfully damage was minimal.
Impacting the market more so is hot and dry weather in Argentina., but crops do remain in good condition.
This is a little premature to impact on pod filling which takes place in Feb/early March, but nevertheless it’s a reminder that this market is at the mercy of funds and weather!
Funds did reduce their short position on meal and beans and flipped their oil position from long to short.
The Brazilian crop is now estimated at over 171MMT privately, vs the USDA’s last estimate of 169MMT; though southern Brazil is also being impacted by dry weather.
The next USDA WASDE report is due next Friday and remains to be seen if they alter any South American production figures as a result of the drier weather.

Despite soya’s upward movement over Christmas, rapemeal prices stayed more steady.
This has given more of an opportunity on new crop – with Aug/Oct at 63% (south) and 72% (north) vs soya, though Nov/Jan still looks a little dear in the south (64%) vs the north (72%).
It’s worth doing something on new crop at these levels, with reasonable offers available through to April, particularly to secure protein into 2026, while soya remains subject to old EUDR issues again.
Crush margins for rapeseed remain poor though as oil demand is sluggish, so meal prices have to do more of the work.
Old crop remains stubbornly high, in part due to crush margins and poor seed supply.

Some higher levels on hulls as a result of the weather situation in Argentina, as a majority of hulls come across alongside soymeal from Argentina, so any sentiment of reduced crop sizes there will impact on prices.
Whether any correction will be seen will depend in part on the weather, but also if demand domestically in Argentina picks back up before reverting back to more attractive levels.

Maize distiller prices moved higher, despite US ethanol production creeping higher over Christmas.
The price increases were likely due to ethanol margins being estimated to be negative, meaning the distillers grains need to be valued higher.
Wheat distillers similarly crept higher for the summer, with minimal availability before April.

As usual no change to the sugarbeet market, with good supplies of British product, but minimal supply of imported product – which struggles to compete against home produced anyway.
It seem likely there won’t be any imported product for the summer as demand has been so poor and home produced can comfortably pick up the slack.

London wheat futures over the festive period were mixed on minimal trade, but globally Russian prices continued to rise as concerns grew over their winter crop and poor conditions, as well as trying to keep domestic stocks at a reasonable level.
This could give an opportunity to other exporting countries who have struggled to compete against Black Sea prices, eg. the EU who are 30% behind on exports vs last year.

And finally, totally irrelevant but quite interesting facts of the week…….

Spring gets shorter by about 30 seconds every year and in hot weather the Eiffel Tower grows by six inches.

Notes:

All data in this report are provided by KW. Price indications are based on 29t bulk tipped loads delivered to Oxfordshire and are guide prices only.

For firm prices and availability, please contact Joe Cobb on 01865 393 139

Historical Product Prices

'Price at Fixed GBP to USD (Jan 2018)' takes out the effect of exchange rate movements between £ vs. $

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