Romania Becomes the EU’s Leading Wheat Exporter at the Beginning of July

Romania has emerged as the leading wheat exporter in the European Union at the start of the 2024-2025 agricultural season, solidifying its leadership position with a significant export quantity of 286,450 tonnes of soft wheat. This comes as the EU overall experiences a decline in grain exports, according to data from the European Commission.

At the start of the 2024-2025 agricultural year, Romania is the EU’s largest wheat exporter. European Commission statistics indicate that the entire Union exported nearly 800,000 tonnes of soft wheat, about half of what was exported during the same period last year.

In the first two weeks of the 2024/25 season, the European Union exported 788,201 tonnes of soft wheat, a 48% decrease from the 1.5 million tonnes exported during the same period of the previous season, the European Commission announced on Tuesday, noting that its data is incomplete, as reported by Reuters and Agerpres.

From July 1 to 14, 2024, Romania was the largest soft wheat exporter in the EU, with 286,450 tonnes, followed by Germany (80,410 tonnes), Lithuania (75,002 tonnes), France (73,316 tonnes), and Latvia (70,762 tonnes).

Additionally, in the first two weeks of the 2024/25 season, the EU exported 409,546 tonnes of barley, down 42% from the same period in the 2023/24 season, and 47,927 tonnes of corn, down 39% year-on-year.

Romania was also the largest exporter of both barley and corn in the EU, exporting 371,406 tonnes of barley and 36,844 tonnes of corn in the first two weeks of the agricultural season starting July 1, 2024.

Conversely, on the import side, European Commission data shows that EU imports of soft wheat increased by 71% year-on-year, reaching 292,703 tonnes, while corn imports rose by 21% to 903,946 tonnes.

Among member states, Spain was the largest wheat importer in the EU at the beginning of the 2024/25 season, with 198,892 tonnes. Spain was also the largest corn importer in the EU, with 449,789 tonnes imported from July 1 to 14, 2024.

Ukraine was the largest supplier of corn and wheat to the EU during this period, with 595,493 tonnes of corn and 201,766 tonnes of wheat. The data also shows that the USA was the second-largest supplier of corn to the EU in the early weeks of the 2024/25 season, with 162,150 tonnes, surpassing the total volume delivered to the EU in the entire 2023/24 season.

The European Commission emphasized that French export data has been incomplete since the start of the calendar year 2024, while export and import data for Bulgaria and Ireland have been incomplete since the beginning of the 2023/24 agricultural year. France is the EU’s largest wheat exporter, and Bulgaria is also a significant wheat supplier.