July 16 (Reuters) - European Union soft wheat exports in the first two weeks of the 2024/25 season reached 788,201 metric tons, down 48% from 1.50 million tons in the year-earlier period though the data was incomplete, the European Commission said on Tuesday.
In its first figures for the 2024/25 marketing year that started on July 1, the Commission put EU barley exports at 409,546 tons as of July 14, down 42% from 702,923 tons in the corresponding period of 2023/24.
EU maize imports for July 1-14 were pegged at 903,946 tons, up 21% from 744,682 tons a year earlier.
As previously, the Commission said export data for France was incomplete since the beginning of calendar year 2024, while export and import data for Bulgaria and Ireland were incomplete since the beginning of marketing year 2023/24.
France is the EU's largest wheat exporter while Bulgaria is also a sizeable wheat supplier.
A breakdown of the current tally showed Romania was the leading EU wheat exporter from July 1-14 with 286,450 tons, followed by Germany with 80,410 tons, Lithuania at 75,002 tons, France at 73,316 tons and Latvia at 70,762 tons.
For the previous 2023/24 season, the Commission kept its full-year tally for soft wheat exports at 31.0 million tons, a volume traders expect to be revised up when missing French data is added.
In imports, Spain remained the biggest maize importer in the EU at the start of 2024/25 with 449,789 tons.
Spain also led early-season EU wheat imports, taking 198,892 out of a total 292,703 tons, which was up 71% from a year ago.
Ukraine was the largest maize and wheat supplier to the EU from July 1-14, with 595,493 and 201,766 tons, respectively.
The United States was the second-largest maize supplier so far in 2024/25 with 162,150 tons, already surpassing its volume shipped to the EU over the whole of last season. (Reporting by Clement Martinot, Anna Peverieri and Gus Trompiz; Editing by David Goodman and Mark Potter)
