Algeria was said to have picked up 330kt of durum wheat from Canada and possibly Mexico in their most recent tender. Algeria do not make public the results of their tenders but industry speculation has the business priced in at US$630 C&F.
This is a great result for the producer and indicates that durum prices still have plenty of upside here. French durum had recently been estimated to move into Algeria at a much lower value than this but with the tender results now public it makes these recent estimates somewhat void. For the sake of the exercise this business would roughly equate to an ex farm C-LPP value close to AUD$700.

Estimating international durum values remains very difficult with huge basis variations at play. For instance in SW Saskatchewan basis for milling wheat to the PNW is roughly C$100 per tonne. Basis for durum, as recently reports by SaskAg, was closer to C$168 per tonne. This tender result does tend to indicate that we should be giving the Canadian price more weight in our marketing decisions and talk that the high prices in Canada were only trade shorts being covered may not be 100% correct. The number does tend to represent a discount of roughly US$70 to current cash bids in Sask though which in turn does question the C$168 basis that SaskAg is reporting. If we use their milling wheat basis estimate we do tend to come up with a durum number that works with this tender result.

With US corn, wheat and soybean futures stronger, Winnipeg and Paris oilseeds higher, we should see firmer bids across the board today.