PARIS: One of three ships waiting off the coast of France to load wheat for top importer Egypt since last month will start loading on Thursday after the exporters received letters of credit, shipping sources said.
Delays in receiving the letters from Egypt have kept the three cargoes of more than 180,000 tonnes of wheat parked at the northern French port of Dunkirk since December.
On Monday traders reported that the letters, which act as a guarantee of payment for the seller of a commodity, were issued for the cargoes bought by Egypt’s General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC).
“The letter of credit for the first cargo is in order,” a shipping source said, adding that the cargo would enter Dunkirk overnight and start loading on Thursday afternoon.
Egyptian inspectors had arrived in Dunkirk to check the cargo, the sources said.
There was still uncertainty about what safety and health rules would apply to the wheat cargo on its arrival in Egypt.
A cargo of French wheat was rejected late last month due to marginal traces of grain fungus ergot infection, which was below the threshold cleared by GASC but above a zero tolerance level set by the quarantine authorities.
“There was a meeting yesterday at the ministry of agriculture but it yielded nothing, they are still insisting on zero percent and negotiations are still ongoing,” one Cairo-based trader said.
“The ships have to load at the end of the day because they’ve been delayed a long time but the situation here on the ground is still unclear,” he said.
GASC was not immediately available for comment.
Egypt is the world’s largest importer of wheat. It takes in about 10 million tonnes annually, with volumes more or less evenly split between state and private buyers.
(Reporting by Raphael Bloch, Gus Trompiz and Sybille de La Hamaide with additional reporting by Maha El Dahan in Abu Dhabi; Writing by Sybille de La Hamaide; Editing by Greg Mahlich and Susan Thomas)
Reuters
