New maize futures contract on JSE

South African grain traders will now have access to the benchmark maize futures prices of the CME Group in Chicago. The group was created by a merger between the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). It has now signed an agreement with the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) to license these benchmarks to create a new JSE cash-settled maize futures contract.
The contract will be listed, traded and settled by the JSE’s Safex Agricultural Products Division alongside current SA grain contracts. The 100t maize contract, with May 2009, July 2009 and September 2009 expiries, was introduced for trading on 28 January.
According to Rick Redding, managing director of CME Group, the JSE will create an additional tool for hedging against price risk, and gain market exposure by developing a maize futures contract based on the price set on the CME Group’s global market. – Drieka Burger