A showing in the latest wheat tender by Egypt, the world's biggest importer of the grain, has helped French wheat to its first positive close in a week.

Egypt's General Authority for Supply Commodities, the state grain buyer, awarded 60,000 tonnes of its latest 180,000-tonne order to French wheat.

The balance went to Russian wheat, which won a grand slam in last week's tender.

France's showing helped Paris wheat for November, the best traded contract, close E0.50 higher at E138.75 a tonne. The near-term August lot jumped E3.50 to E132.50 a tonne.

'Keener competitor'

Egypt's decision "helped put a bit of a floor under Paris prices", a London trader told Agrimoney.com.

"Some people were disappointed when French wheat didn't get anything last week. Now prices have fallen to a level where they look a keener competitor against Black Sea origin."

Indeed, Paris wheat closed lower for the previous four trading days, shedding more than 4%, with technical signals and waning concerns over drought also sapping prices.

"The recent rains and the failure of important technical support… fed the selling pressure," Agritel, the Paris-based consultancy, said.

The winning French wheat at Thursday's tender was offered by Bunge at $171.77 (E141.16) a tonne, compared with a cheapest offer of $179.00 a tonne at last week's event.

Short of supplies? 

Indeed, Egypt's grain bill for its latest 180,000-tonne order will be, at $31.4m, more than $700,000 cheaper than last week's purchase.

The close succession of the orders follows a period of nearly two months when Egypt, which typically runs tenders every fortnight, had gone without publicly testing the international market.

"Their own harvest starts soon. It may be that they have found themselves a bit short before the new crop comes in," a City analyst told Agrimoney.com.

"Or they might be looking to take advantage of lower prices."