Ethanol Blog

Grains Council Targets Caribbean Markets

The U.S. Grains Council recently sent a team to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola to educate an audience of Dominican corn buyers and end users on the findings of the Council's 2014-2015 Corn Harvest Quality Report, according to an article on the Council's website (http://bit.ly/…).

The market for U.S. coarse grains and co-products such as dried distillers grains have a market advantage in such regions in terms of freight costs. For instance, the Dominican Republic is located only 800 miles away from the U.S. and as a corn deficit country, imports about 1.2 million metric tons of corn annually.

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The U.S. share of the Dominican corn market has been experiencing encroachment from South American exporters. During the 2009/2010 marketing year, the U.S. had nearly 90% of the Dominican corn market; however, only 600,000 tons were exported to the Dominican Republic in the 2013/2014 marketing year.

The Council's team fielded questions from Dominican buyers, who said they have been more satisfied with the quality of U.S. corn this year than in the past, citing concerns about broken corn and foreign material levels.

The Council said it will continue to target the Caribbean region with a goal of recapturing U.S. corn market shares in the area, including the Dominican Republic.

Cheryl Anderson can be reached at Cheryl.anderson@dtn.com

(ES)

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