Kazakhstan holds record pea export forecast of 125,000 tonnes for 2025/26 despite June slump
Kazakhstan exported 8,900 tonnes of peas in June, 51% less than a month earlier, according to Committee of State Revenues data cited by zol.ru. Season-to-date shipments reached 99,000 tonnes, up 22.2% year on year, with Afghanistan taking almost 60% of the volume. The Grain Union of Kazakhstan left its full-season forecast at a record 125,000 tonnes.
June shipments halve
Kazakhstan exported 8,900 tonnes of peas in June of the 2025/26 marketing year, excluding shipments to Eurasian Economic Union member states, according to Committee of State Revenues data cited by zol.ru. The volume was 51% below the 18,200 tonnes shipped in the previous month. The figures were published by Evgeny Karabanov, head of the analytics committee of the Grain Union of Kazakhstan, on his Telegram channel.
The monthly drop has not changed the direction of the season. Over the first 10 months of the current marketing year, pea exports totalled 99,000 tonnes, 22.2% more than in the same period of the previous season and only 1,000 tonnes short of a full season's volume, according to the same report. With two months of the marketing year still to run, cumulative shipments are therefore already at the level of an entire normal season, which is the basis for the record projection.
Afghanistan absorbs almost 60% of volumes
Afghanistan, the main buyer of Kazakh peas, increased purchases 2.53-fold this season to 59,200 tonnes. That is close to 60% of all shipments covered by the data, leaving the trade far more dependent on a single destination than it was a year earlier.
Performance across the other destinations over the 10-month period was mixed:
- China took 18,800 tonnes, 19% less year on year;
- Uzbekistan took 14,500 tonnes, down 33%;
- Tajikistan took 3,100 tonnes, up 6.9%.
Two markets disappeared altogether. Exports to Kyrgyzstan and Turkey fell to zero, against 5,000 tonnes and 1,700 tonnes respectively a year earlier. Stripping out the additional Afghan demand, the combined volume sent to Kazakhstan's remaining buyers is lower than in the previous season, so the record pace rests entirely on one market.
Russian surplus pressures prices
Karabanov linked the current price environment to the Russian crop. Pea production in Russia exceeded 5 million tonnes in the current marketing year, and prices for the crop have fallen as a result, he said. Russian supply competes with Kazakh origin in the same Central Asian and Asian destinations, which limits the pricing power of exporters from Kazakhstan even as their volumes grow.
The same shift is visible inside Kazakhstan's own trade balance. Imports of pulses, mainly from Russia, reached 23,600 tonnes over nine months of the current marketing year, more than 1.9 times the combined total for the whole of the previous marketing year, according to Karabanov. Cheaper Russian material entering the domestic market puts additional pressure on prices paid to Kazakh growers, while giving processors and re-exporters access to lower-cost raw material.
Record forecast left unchanged
“We leave our previous forecast for pea exports from Kazakhstan in the 2025/26 marketing year unchanged at 125,000 tonnes, which will be an absolute record for the entire history,” Karabanov said, as quoted by zol.ru.
Meeting that target requires roughly 26,000 tonnes in the closing stretch of the season, a monthly pace well above the 8,900 tonnes recorded in June. Whether it is reached depends primarily on continued Afghan buying, on whether Chinese and Uzbek demand stabilises, and on how far prices are pushed down by the Russian surplus. For producers and traders in Kazakhstan, the outcome would be a record tonnage achieved in one of the weakest price environments the crop has seen in recent seasons.
