During the confinement, the wheat was exported to the port of Caen

The Caen (Calvados) canal to the sea saw some traffic pass during confinement. And for good reason, there was activity on the quays of Blainville-sur-Orne, at the foot of the silo of the Agrial cooperative, founded in Normandy and which today has 13,000 members in the Great West. "We first had a lot of uncertainties," recalls Sébastien Lemaistre, director of the Agrial agriculture division. “The grain market is quite volatile, very dependent on supply and demand. At the start of the crisis, prices fell from € 195 per tonne to around € 170. "

An essential raw material

Finally, like the scenes in supermarkets on the brink of containment, the manager described "a shopping cart effect" on the cereals market, especially wheat. "The operators feared supply problems and a worse harvest in 2020. They therefore returned to stock. The price per tonne went up around 190-195 €. »An essential raw material for basic foods such as bread, flour or pasta.

And this is how the cargo ballet gained momentum in the port of Caen. "We have doubled the number of passages compared to March / April 2019," says Antoine de Gouville, the director of port equipment at the Caen Chamber of Commerce and Industry. About twenty ships loaded in two months. With the sanitary measures, it was of course necessary to adapt: ​​“We sometimes used two gantry cranes instead of one, to spread out the work. "

120,000 t of grain left Normandy

Despite this constrained operation, the port and the cooperative managed to meet demand. A little more than 120,000 t of cereals, mostly wheat (but also a little barley and rapeseed), collected in the Orne, part of the Manche, and Calvados, left Normandy during the containment period. Against 95,000 t last year at this time. The Portuguese market was again very buoyant, ahead of Morocco and Algeria.

“We are moving towards a year at 420,000 tonnes of cereals exported from Caen. It's more than usual, ”says Sébastien Lemaistre. The director of Agrial's agriculture division is now looking into the collection season, with a close eye on the weather: “We had a very rainy autumn and a very dry spring. Harvesting is happening now. "