Japan, the world’s largest corn importer, will continue buying the commodity from Ukraine although shipments have slowed recently on quality concerns, Ukrainian analysts said.

“Shipments to Japan will be taking place anyway,” Nikolay Vernitsky, director of the Kiev-based agricultural researcher ProAgro, said by phone from the city today. “They have indeed reduced purchases of corn from Eastern Europe, although it applies to Romania, Hungary and other origins, not just Ukraine.”

Five Japanese trading companies purchased 800,000 metric tons of Ukrainian corn in November as the price was about $20 a ton lower than buying the commodity from the U.S., the Asian country’s regular source, according to ProAgro’s website yesterday.

Ukraine supplied 553,000 tons of corn to Japan as of April 18, ProAgro said on its website. Traders estimate that shipments to Japan will be around 200,000 tons in April through June, according to the statement.

“Japanese are complaining, but they are not refusing,” Liza Malyshko, an analyst at the Kiev-based researcher UkrAgroConsult, said by phone today.

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