Panama Canal Woes to Delay Grain Ships well into '24
Bulk grain shippers hauling crops from the U.S. Gulf Coast export hub to Asia are sailing longer routes and paying higher freight costs to avoid vessel congestion and record-high transit fees in the drought-hit Panama Canal, traders and analysts said.The shipping snarl through one of the world's main maritime trade routes comes at the peak season for U.S. crop exports, and the higher costs are threatening to dent demand for U.S. corn and soy suppliers that have already ceded market share to Brazil in recent years.
Euronext Says Working on Black Sea Wheat Futures
The rising influence of Black Sea markets on world prices prompted Euronext to start working on developing futures contract that would allow price hedging in one of the world's largest export zones for the grain, it said on Friday. Production swings in the Black Sea and European Union have become the main drivers of world wheat prices to the detriment of Chicago futures as U.S. farmers increasingly turned to corn and soybean crops, analysts and traders said. "Having assessed the long-standing need for a proper price-setting mechanism in that production zone, we are now engaged in a serious reflection about a careful design," Euronext head of commodities Olivier Raevel told Reuters at the Cereals Europe conference in Geneva.
Brazilian Soybeans Reach US, More En Route
Two bulk shipments of Brazilian soybeans arrived at the U.S. ports of Wilmington, North Carolina, and Norfolk, Virginia, over the weekend, the first large South American shipments to hit the U.S. East Coast this season, Reuters shipping data showed. They were the latest shipments since two cargoes arrived at the U.S. Gulf Coast early last month, starting the country's biggest wave of soy imports in history, with about 2 million tonnes expected to reach U.S. shores over the next two months.
One Dead, Several Missing after Congo Boat Capsizes
At least one person died and a dozen others were missing after a boat capsized in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a spokesman for the United Nations mission in the country said on Monday. A U.N. drone spotted the vessel capsizing on Lake Kivu and peacekeepers intervened, Lieutenant-Colonel Felix Prosper Basse, a spokesman for the UN Stabilisation Mission in the DRC, told Reuters. "A corpse was recovered and 14 people were rescued. We were told about a dozen others are still missing," Basse said, adding that it was unclear how many people the boat had been carrying. The vessel had been travelling to Congo's North Kivu Province from South Kivu. Accidents are common on the Great Lakes of central Africa due to overloading, lack of maintenance and lax enforcement of safety standards.
