Japan’s flour millers appear to have avoided major damage from last week’s earthquake, but some eastern ports were hit, a Canadian Wheat Board official in Tokyo said Thursday.
Derek Sliworsky, the wheat and barley exporter’s general manager in Tokyo, said the board is trying to speed loading of its vessels to move food and animal feed into Japan as quickly as possible.
The CWB is a major wheat shipper to Japan, which is one of the world’s top buyers of premium milling-quality wheat.
On Wednesday, CEO Mayo Schmidt of top Canadian grain handler Viterra told Reuters it continues to ship grain and canola into southern Japanese ports that have not suffered major damage.
Many ports outside the affected region can still take cargo, but getting food into the areas most affected by the tsunami has been difficult, Sliworsky said in a press release.
“It’s a very dynamic situation right now,” he said.
