Durum Wheat

Pasta grade, 13% protein, vitreous kernels 75%+

Durum is a different species from bread wheat and behaves like a different commodity. Triticum durum is the hardest wheat grown, and it is milled into semolina rather than flour — coarse, golden particles that give pasta its bite and its resistance to overcooking. The specification that governs value is the proportion of hard vitreous amber kernels, or HVAC, contracted at 75% minimum and often 80% for premium pasta grists. A kernel that has gone starchy rather than vitreous — visible as a chalky yellow-belly — mills into flour rather than semolina and drags down the semolina yield the mill is paying for. Protein at 13% minimum builds the gluten network that stops extruded pasta disintegrating in the pot, and yellow pigment measured as beta-carotene gives the finished product its colour, which is a genuine commercial attribute rather than a cosmetic one.

Supply is far narrower than bread wheat and prices are correspondingly more volatile. Canadian Western Amber Durum sets the global quality benchmark; Italian, French and Kazakh durum serve regional pasta industries; Australian durum runs into Asian and Middle Eastern mills. Because the growing area is small and concentrated, a drought in one origin moves the world price in a way that never happens in milling wheat — durum can trade at a very substantial premium to bread wheat and occasionally at a multiple of it. Buyers are pasta manufacturers, couscous and bulgur producers, and semolina mills. CBIL brokers durum on GAFTA terms with certification of protein, vitreous kernel count, mottling, moisture and test weight at load port. Tell us your semolina yield requirement and your minimum HVAC — those two numbers determine which origins can serve you at all.