* French export lobby to host GASC-led delegation next week
* Visit part of French lobbying since Egypt altered tenders
By Valerie Parent
PARIS, Jan 4 (Reuters) - A delegation led by Egypt's state wheat buyer GASC will visit France next week and traders said French lobbyists will seek to persuade major importer Egypt to alter new rules that hamper shipments from the port of Rouen.
Egypt is the world's largest wheat importer. Its international tenders have been a major issue for the global wheat trade since last year as GASC has tightened the terms it applies following controversy over the quality of cargoes of Russian wheat.
The French trade has been concerned about a new requirement to load 60,000-tonne shipments to Egypt at a single port -- effectively ruling out France's leading grains port of Rouen, which is too shallow to fully load such volumes.
The focus of the visit by Egyptian officials would be to show the merits of Rouen, traders said.
"France Export Cereales has since the end of October extended an invitation to GASC to visit France to meet local operators and see the work of the French sector," Francois Gatel, head of the French grains export lobby, told Reuters.
"The visit by the delegation, which will be headed by Nomani Nomani, vice-chairman of GASC, is scheduled for Jan. 11-15 and aims to show this major buyer the work of the grains sector from the fields to the ports," he said, declining to detail the programme of the visit.
Traders said Nomani would be accompanied by his counterpart from the Holding Company for Food Industries (HCFI), another state-owned Egyptian buyer, and a director from Egypt's agricultural quarantine service.
Gatel said the members of the delegation other than Nomani were yet to be confirmed.
The visit by Egyptian officials is the latest in a series of lobbying efforts by the French grains trade since GASC's shakeup of its tender terms.
"They want to show him around Rouen to try and argue that the logistics and the wheat shipped from there is as good as the other ports," one trader said.
After a strong start to the 2009/10 campaign that began on July 1, French wheat has won less business than Russian wheat since the new tender criteria were implemented.
GASC's Nomani appeared to rebuff French calls for an easing of the new terms when he said last month that Egypt had to treat all wheat suppliers equally.
In its latest tender on Thursday, GASC bought 240,000 tonnes of Russian wheat. This brought its total wheat purchases since July 1 to 3.85 million tonnes, compared with around 5 million in 2008/09. (Additional reporting by Maha El Dahan in Cairo; Writing by Gus Trompiz, editing by Anthony Barker)