West Australia woes threaten Japan noodle supplies:
The drought in Western Australia threatens to land Japan and South Korea with a noodle shortage unless supplies of specialist wheat are carefully administered, the top exporter has said. CBH Group, which handles virtually all Western Australia's grain harvest, has urged "collaborative management" over supplies of noodle-grade wheat to avoid a near-halving, to below 4m tonnes, in the state's wheat production causing consumers in the Asian giants to go without a staple food. With noodle wheat typically accounting for 13-14% the state's wheat crop, the implied harvest of roughly 550,000 falls well short of the 800,000 tonnes that Japan and South Korea typically require each year. "There is enough noodle wheat around," Tom Puddy, CBH's marketing manager told Agrimoney.com.
But supplies will require "collaborative management within the industry" to ensure they are tailored to requirements. "If it is not managed properly, there is definitely a risk" of a shortfall, he said.
'Potential to stuff it up'
Appropriate management included alerting Japan and South Korea themselves over the tight supplies, and attempting to assure quality as well as quantity of supplies, Mr Puddy said. The prospect of a heady premium, currently at Aus$35 a tonne, was likely to attract "opportunistic" merchants with little experience of handling noodle grade wheat, which requires careful blending to produce the appropriate flour."This is not like selling wheat to Yemen, Bangladesh or Vietnam. Marketing noodle wheat is a specialist job." Growers should be careful to avoid selling to a merchant which might unsettle Western Australia's valuable grain trade relations with two important Asian clients. "There is the potential for some idiot to stuff it up," Mr Puddy said.
Noodle varieties
He added that he expected the premium for noodle wheat to "go a bit higher" as the 2010-11 crop year progresses, with only limited opportunity for substitution from alternatives such as US soft white winter wheat.
Japanese and South Korean-type noodles, such as the udon variety, require specialist wheat grades unlike the noodles commonly seen elsewhere, which are made from a more standard flour. END
