Wheat consumers will have to get used to a “new price level” as importers pay more for the grain amid competition for U.S. supplies, according to an industry executive from Indonesia, Asia’s largest buyer.
“Wheat prices in the world will still be going up,” because infrastructure in the U.S. is not adequate to immediately meet surging demand, Franciscus Welirang, chairman of the Flour Mills Association in Indonesia, said in an interview today.
The U.S., the world’s largest wheat shipper, doesn’t have enough port capacity to move all the wheat ordered by importers after Russia, the world’s third-largest wheat grower last year, extended a ban on exports, Welirang said by phone from Jakarta. Buyers are rushing to secure supplies, causing ships to pile up at U.S. ports, said Welirang, a director at PT Indofood Sukses Makmur, Indonesia’s biggest maker of instant noodles.
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