Philippine flour millers keep US wheat prices stable

MANILA, Philippines - US wheat growers continue to bank on Philippine flour millers to keep prices stable for soft white wheat as global prices decline.

Virginia-based trade group US Wheat Associates said while global wheat prices have fallen over the past year, the price of wheat imported by Philippine millers “has remained more stable.”

Joseph Sowers, assistant regional vice president of US Wheat Associates, said while large wheat harvests around the world have increased global supplies and depressed prices, American wheat growers are still getting support from key Asian markets such as Japan, Korea, Thailand and the Philippines.

Manufacturers of cookies, crackers and cakes in these countries continue to rely “nearly exclusively” on flour made from soft white wheat grown in the Pacific Northwest region of the US.

This, however, comes with a challenge, said Sowers as the region composed of Washington, Oregon and Idaho have been afflicted by a harsh drought for the past two years, decreasing production and hurting the quality of soft wheat crop.

The drought has driven up the protein levels in soft white wheat, decreasing the already short supply for cake and biscuit manufacturers.

“While bakeries prefer high protein wheat flour to make bread, cake manufacturers prefer low protein flour to make fluffy products, as do cracker manufacturers to make crispy products,” Sowers said.

However, he said flour millers in the Philippines have opted to raise the protein levels in their purchase contracts from US growers.

Wheat is among the Philippines’ top 10 agricultural imports that also include soybean oil/cake meal, milk and cream products, fertilizer, rice, bovine meat, palm kernel olein, sugar preparation, urea, and coffee.

 The Philippines with its strong milling industry has been the third largest buyer of US wheat since 2014.

US Wheat Associates has been conducting business in the country for 50 years now.

 This year, US wheat exports to the Philippines are expected to hit 4.1 million metric tons.