Kazakhstani wheat exports to Italy are picking up. In five months, deliveries have grown by 58% to 292 thousand tons. Such data is provided by the National Statistics Bureau. This is the best result for the period since at least 2015, the APK News agency reports with reference to Data Hab.
The fact that wheat exports from Kazakhstan to Italy are steadily gaining momentum is also indicated by a noticeable excess of the January-May levels of the previous 10 years. The difference with the average value is 2.5 times.
In addition, the September-May 2024/2025 marketing year indicator turned out to be a record for at least 10 years - 355.2 thousand tons. However, the annual growth in this case is not so impressive, +8%.
The weak positive dynamics were due to the low levels of the first four months of the current marketing year, September-December 2024. Immediately before this, by the way, there were reports of problems for domestic exporters with the transit of wheat through the territory of Russia, which arose after Kazakhstan introduced a complete ban on the import of similar products.
At first, it was about creating bureaucratic obstacles. However, already in mid-October, the Russian Federation introduced official restrictions, citing the discovery of pests in Kazakh agricultural products. With some relaxations, the mentioned restrictions are still in effect today.
The described difficulties seem to have prompted Kazakhstan to look for new logistics routes. In any case, recently there have been more and more reports in the news about expanding cooperation with Estonia and Latvia, which have access to the Baltic Sea.
At the same time, the dynamics of exports as a whole could have been affected by the probable factor of demand from Italy itself. Due to prohibitive duties, the export of Russian wheat there stopped in June 2024.
To complete the picture, we note that Italy is a traditional destination for the export of Kazakh wheat, but not the largest. According to the results of September-May 2024/2025 marketing year, the share of this country in the total volume of wheat supplies abroad amounted to only 6% (-2 p.p. y/y). Only hard wheat varieties, which are distinguished by their higher quality, are sent to Italy.