Ethanol Blog

A jump mid-week in the corn board helped steady prices of distillers dried grains and stop the long downward trend in DDG spot prices.

The DTN spot price average remained steady at $116 per ton for the second week after a long downward trend since mid-February, falling about $14 per ton in that time. However, this is still the lowest the average has reached since mid-October 2015.

Of the 36 Midwestern locations DTN collects spot prices from, 15 locations reported their spot prices remained unchanged since last week. Spot prices at 13 locations rose between $2 and $6 per ton in the past week, while eight locations reported price decreases between $1 and $4 per ton.

Merchandisers told DTN that a rally in corn and soybean meal prices on Wednesday finally helped DDG prices find some ground. Had that rally not occurred, DDG prices would otherwise have still been flat and trending lower.

Although there has been some renewed interest in booking DDG out forward, merchandisers still described the past week as quiet.

The value of DDG relative to corn this week was at about 87%, down from 90% last week. The value of DDG relative to soybean meal also fell to about 40%, down from 43% last week.

The cost per unit of protein for DDG held steady at about $4.64 this week, while the cost per unit of protein for soybean meal fell rose just slightly, from about $5.62 last week to $6.11 this week.

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

(ES)

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