The amount of US corn inspected for export in the week ended October 4 totaled 1.351 million mt, up 132% from the 582,248 mt inspected in the year-ago week, data from the Department of Agriculture showed Tuesday.
The most recent reporting period's total was 1.9% lower than the 1.377 million mt of corn inspected in the previous week, according to the USDA's weekly Federal Grain Inspection Service report.
The largest share of US grain exports last week was corn, at 56.2% of the total grains inspected for export. Soybeans were second at 23.7%, followed by wheat at 17.6%, according to the data.
In the first 34 days of the 2018-19 marketing year, the amount of US corn inspected for export totaled 5.806 million mt, 62.1% higher than in the same period in the previous marketing year and 9.5% of the USDA's projection of 60.963 million mt for the marketing year that will end August 31, 2019.
US export shipments were above the weekly pace needed to reach the USDA's estimate for exports in the ongoing marketing year, according to the data.
The data showed the total amount of US corn that was inspected leaving the US Gulf Coast was 757,288 mt -- 737,148 mt of yellow corn and 20,140 mt of white corn. The top destinations were Mexico with 191,317 mt of yellow corn, Japan with 137,019 mt of yellow corn, Colombia with 129,298 mt of yellow corn and 14,014 mt of white corn, Guatemala 75,832 of yellow corn, and Egypt with 58,607 mt of yellow corn.
The amount of US corn inspected leaving the US Pacific Coast was 510,359 mt of yellow corn. The destinations were South Korea with 260,493 mt and Japan with 249,548 mt.
US corn that was inspected leaving the Interior region totaled 68,387 mt of yellow corn. The top destinations were Mexico with 51,810 mt of yellow corn and Taiwan with 11,827 mt of yellow corn.
US corn inspected for export is corn that has been sold and is inspected during loading at export locations for shipment overseas. Traders consider the pace needed to meet the USDA projection an indicator of demand.
spglobal.com