UK wheat exports held firm as orders from Algeria, and an uptick in purchases by drought-hit Spain, filled the void created by the end of a run of transatlantic shipments.

The UK, the European Union's third-ranked wheat grower, exported 126,816 tonnes of the grain in April, customs data showed.

The figure was in line with that the month before, and up 38% on the figure for April 2011, despite the end of a run of nearly 250,000 tonnes of shipments to the east coast of America, trade reflecting the weak price of UK wheat compared with US supplies earlier in 2011-12.

Values of US soft red winter wheat, the type traded in Chicago, and in small amounts on other exchanges, were swollen by strong values of rival grain corn, although it is now rated by American brokers as a world-beat on price.

Algeria uplift

The UK's April exports were boosted in part by a partial recovery, to 26,157 tonnes, in shipments to Spain, typically the top importer of British feed wheat, and whose needs are expected to be swollen in the months ahead by a weak 2012 grains harvest.

And Algeria may show up in future US export data if trade talk is to be believed, identifying a further shipment in May of 25,000 tonnes.

This would take total UK exports to Algeria in 2011-12, which ends this month, to more than 100,000 tonnes, four times the shipments on this route the previous season.

Rapeseed demand

Tuesday's data also showed UK rapeseed exports remaining firm, at 96,137 tonnes, in April, quadruple the level the year before, if well below the March figure.

UK rapeseed exports for the whole of 2009-10 were only a little higher, at 97,664 tonnes.

However, trade in the oilseed has been helped by successive bumper harvests, at a time when poor crops in the likes of Germany and Poland have left continental biodiesel plants scrambling for alternative sources of supply.