Ukraine may lose the wheat market in Egypt

This spring, Egypt, the world's largest wheat buyer, introduced new requirements for imported wheat, increasing the protein content to 12.5% ​​from 11.5% for wheat purchased from Ukraine and Russia.

Ukraine could lose Egypt's second-largest wheat export market due to new wheat import requirements in favor of rival Russia, Ukraine's agriculture minister said.

According to the consulting company UkrAgroConsult, Ukraine exported about 2.5 million tons of wheat to Egypt in the 2016/17 season, or about 14% of the country's total wheat exports.

“I do not exclude that in this (marketing) year we will have problems with export to Egypt, and they will take our wheat in smaller volumes,” said Maksim Martynyuk in an interview.

“We could have dropped out of the Egyptian market altogether, because we do not have such volumes and specifications that we could supply to Egypt,” he said in an interview in Kiev. “There is an opinion that this is being done to increase supplies of Russian grain. And if the buyer intends to buy Russian grain, then it is unlikely that we will be able to change anything, ”he added.

“We need to increase our supply to the Asian market, which consumes large quantities of both crushed and coarse grains. Asian countries can allow baking bread from grain with a lower protein content, ”Martynyuk said.