By Dwayne Klassen, Commodity News Service Canada

Winnipeg – September 4/12 – Canola futures on the ICE Canada trading platform finished on the defensive Tuesday with late day profit-taking and a pick up in farmer deliveries of canola behind some of the price weakness, market watchers said.

Some canola futures had established new contract highs in overnight activity. Strength in canola had been associated with steady domestic processor demand as well as the advances experienced by CBOT soybean and soyoil futures, traders said. The pricing of old export business by commercials and continued reports of smaller than anticipated canola yields had also influenced some of the price strength.

Some early chart-related buying by speculative and commodity fund accounts also provided some of the early bullish sentiment in canola, brokers said.

Canola futures, however, we unable to maintain the upward momentum and values turned lower as the end-user demand faded and as elevator company hedge selling picked up later in the day. That selling reflected increased farmer deliveries, brokers said.

Favourable weather for harvest activities on the Canadian prairies was also viewed as an undermining price influence. The relative strength of the Canadian dollar also added to the downward price push.

There were an estimated 13,740 canola contracts traded Tuesday, up from the 11,610 contracts that changed hands during the previous session.

Milling wheat, durum and barley contracts were untraded and unchanged.

Prices are in Canadian dollars per metric ton.