During the BLACK SEA GRAIN. KYIV – 2026 this week, market analysts noted that the pace of Ukrainian wheat shipments to foreign markets in the 2025/26 season is significantly lower than last year’s and long-term averages. The main reason was the restricted access to the European market, which forced Ukrainian traders to urgently search for other sales channels and redraw the geography of exports. As a result, Ukraine was forced to compete intensively with other players in the Black Sea region in the difficult grain markets of North Africa and the Middle East, ukragroconsult wrote.
Also, information presented at the conference shows that corn exports in the 2025/26 season also started much weaker than the previous year’s level. Closer to January, the rates of shipments somewhat leveled off, but the overall amplitude of exports still did not reach the peak values of previous years. The situation with wheat turned out to be even more complicated: the volumes of its sales during almost the whole season remained below last year’s figures. The slowdown in market dynamics was particularly noticeable in the period from September to January 2025.
The market dynamics were also affected by weather conditions during the harvest, which delayed the start of corn exports. At the same time, pressure from competitors from the US and Brazil intensified in Ukraine’s traditional grain markets (EU and Turkey).
According to UkrAgroConsult forecasts, the domestic agricultural sector will enter the new harvest season with an extremely large volume of unsold grain, which will put additional pressure on domestic prices and warehouse logistics.
