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Rapeseed: Will prices fail to find support?

September 14, 2017 at 8:02 AM , Starry Night Ltd.
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Withholding the crop from active trade might not lead to the necessary price increase. Competitive prices in the region are quite powerful in cooling off upward corrections.

SOFIA. Domestic consumption throughout the year has always been small and on a weekly basis goes by a few metric tons. When rapeseed is refined through manufacturing processes and then exported, farmers could realize higher profits, which should have made local parties, by now, strategically rethink their long-term investment decisions. However, growing the crop and refining it are two quite different activities.

Rapeseed: exports are what drives the local market

When competitive prices are too competitive for realizing margins, selling parties prefer to wait. However, such a tactical decision actually leads to a slowdown of exports. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, since the beginning of the marketing season till the end of last week, the country exported via Varna seaport only 65,082 mt of rapeseed, which on a year-to-year basis is 64.2% lower.

Rapeseed is the only locally grown crop that is mainly exported to the world, with shipped volumes to EU member countries leading among the rest. Current average purchasing prices are higher than those of last year, but competitive prices within the Black sea basin exert downward pressure.

In the realm of prices

Local market players do not expect huge upward swings in the price of rapeseed in the short-term. Rapeseed, among all other locally grown crops, is quite attuned to regional market forces. The bumper crop in Ukraine will substantially increase the supply of rapeseed in the region, which will most probably cool off the medium-term price strategies of local sellers.

 Rapeseed, Bulgaria

Crop

EUR/kg

rapeseed

0.346

EXW Bulgaria

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