Kazakhstan is heading for its strongest wheat flour export season in years, reviving an industry that once made the country the world’s largest flour exporter.
Exports are forecast to reach 2.12 million tonnes in the 2025/26 marketing year, according to Yevgeny Karabanov, chairman of the Analytics Committee of the Grain Union of Kazakhstan. Shipments had already reached 1.87 million tonnes after ten months, up 18.3% from a year earlier.
That is a substantial volume by global standards. Kazakhstan exported 1.88 million tonnes of wheat flour in 2024, making it the world’s second-largest exporter by volume after Turkey. The country has been an even bigger player in the past: around 15 years ago, Kazakhstan was the world’s leading flour exporter, although its share of the market subsequently declined as competitors expanded their own milling industries.
Afghanistan is central to the current recovery. In 2024, it bought about 1.23 million tonnes of Kazakh flour, roughly two-thirds of Kazakhstan’s total exports, and Karabanov said shipments increased by a further 21.5% during the first ten months of the current season.
Wheat flour is simply wheat that has been milled into the powder used to make bread and other foods, but the distinction matters for Kazakhstan. Exporting flour allows Kazakh companies to carry out the processing – and retain more of the value – before the product crosses the border. Exporting raw wheat leaves that business to mills in the importing country.
That shift is already visible in Uzbekistan. Its purchases of Kazakh flour fell 15.8% during the period cited by Karabanov, while its imports of Kazakh wheat rose by 35%, as more grain is processed domestically. Afghanistan may eventually move in the same direction: its government has raised the tariff on imported flour while lowering duties on wheat in an effort to support domestic mills. Wheat imports subsequently jumped sharply in March and April.
For now, however, Afghanistan remains heavily dependent on its neighbors for basic food supplies. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimated its cereal import requirement at 3.7 million tonnes in 2025/26, mostly wheat flour, citing limited domestic milling capacity. Dry conditions have also affected Afghan wheat production. Meanwhile, Pakistan closed its main Torkham and Chaman border crossings after clashes in October, disrupting another important Afghan trade route.
Kazakhstan’s flour revival forms part of a wider increase in agricultural exports. From September 2025 to July 30, 2026, the country exported 13.9 million tonnes of grain and flour in grain equivalent, up 12.6% year-on-year, with Uzbekistan and Afghanistan among the main destinations.
The growth also fits Kazakhstan’s broader attempt to make more money from its grain before exporting it. Earlier, The Times of Central Asia reported that the country plans to increase its grain deep-processing capacity nearly tenfold by 2028, targeting products with greater added value than raw grain.
