Grain Shipments Resume After Three-Week Halt

Grain vessels resumed loading at two regional terminals on Tuesday after a three-week suspension, easing pressure on buyers who had been drawing down reserves.

The halt had pushed benchmark wheat contracts up sharply, and prices gave back much of that gain within hours of the announcement. Traders cautioned that the recovery is fragile: shipping volumes are running at roughly sixty percent of the pre-suspension average, limited less by port capacity than by the availability of vessels willing to make the run.

Insurance remains the bottleneck. Underwriters raised premiums during the suspension and have been slow to bring them down, which adds cost to every cargo and makes marginal routes uneconomic.

Agriculture ministries in three importing countries said reserves had not fallen to critical levels during the halt, though two acknowledged drawing on strategic stocks.

Analysts said the more important question is whether the arrangement holds through the harvest peak, when volumes roughly double and any disruption is harder to absorb.