Prospects for world trade in wheat flour improved in the past several months, resulting in a boost by the International Grains Council (IGC) in its forecast of the 2011-12 trade total.

The IGC placed likely global trade in wheat flour in the 2011-12 crop season at 11.8 million tonnes of wheat equivalent, or 185 million cwts in terms of flour, reported World-Grain.com.

That is up 180,000 tonnes from the initial forecast made several months ago and would indicate a flour export total unchanged from the prior year's 11,789,000 tonnes in wheat equivalent.

Considerably larger than the rise from the preliminary forecast for 2011-12 was the increase of 420,000 tonnes made in the estimate of actual global flour trade in 2010-11. For the past crop year, the IGC raised wheat flour volume by 420,000 tonnes from the prior figure.

These increases still left world flour exports below the all-time record of 12,686,000 tonnes attained in 2009-10. World flour exports first exceeded 10 million tonnes of wheat equivalent in 1995-96 and have remained at this level for most of the first decade of the 21st century.