ICE Canada Review: Harvest delays bolster canola

Wet and cool weather conditions continue to prevent producers from making significant harvest progress in western Canada, broker said, adding that concerns about damage to the canola crop from frost also provided a firm floor for values to work with.

The pull-back in the value of the Canadian dollar helped to stimulate some fresh domestic processor demand and encouraged commercials to price old export business to Japan, traders said.

The advances in CBOT soybean and soyoil values also encouraged some of the upward price action seen in canola Wednesday.

Some chart based speculative buying was also evident and provided canola with some additional strength.

The upside in canola was limited by a pick up in the level of farmer deliveries into the cash pipeline. The lack of fresh export demand was also an undermining price influence.

Spreading was a feature of the activity and helped to augment the volume total.

There were an estimated 13,555 canola contracts traded Wednesday, down from the 15,240 contracts that changed hands during the previous session. Of the contracts traded, 5,612 were spread related.

Western barley futures were unchanged. There were no barley contracts traded on Wednesday. On Tuesday, no western barley contracts changed hands.