Australia’s record barley crop being exported at pace

After a slow start to the Australian new crop grain export program in October 2025, which was largely due to the late harvest, shipping of Australia’s 25/26 barley crop is now running at full steam.

In January, ABS reported 912,990mt of barley exports were executed during November, up from the 174,645mt shipped out in October, the start of the 25/26 grain marketing year.

The trade is reporting significantly more stock has been exported in December and January as suppliers aim to deliver as much grain as possible into markets before the northern hemisphere harvest. CBH exported 2mmt of total grain from its 4 ports in December alone while Bunge exported a December record of 1mmt from it’s Adelaide, Yorke and Eyre Peninsula ports. GrainCorp expects to export a total of 5.5 – 6.5 mmt for the full marketing year and is well advanced.

The trend of high feed barley exports and low malt barley shipments, as pointed out in the last issue of MaltNews, has continued at the start of the new marketing year. Of the nearly 1.1mmt of new crop barley exported in October and November, 85% was recorded as feed and just 157,113mt was shipped as malting barley.

The dominant market for feed barley was China, that destination taking nearly 700kmt, while it is pleasing to see Saudi Arabia has returned as a significant market so far taking nearly 120kmt of new crop. The largest markets for malt barley in October-November 2025 were Mexico, taking 63kmt, Japan 29kmt, and Vietnam 25kmt. While China was the second most important market for malt barley, taking 32kmt, this tonnage represents less than 5% of the total barley shipped to China. The trend maybe becoming permanent.