AUSTRALIA shipped a milestone 24.1 million tonnes of wheat last season, eclipsing the previous record by a massive 27 per cent.

The big export program, which beat the record of 19 million tonnes set in 1996-97, has resulted in shipments to 50 countries around the world, including North Korea.

Wheat export figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show 11,350 tonnes of wheat in a bulk shipment was sent to North Korea in 2010-11 and 9647 tonnes last season.

That was despite the Australian Government suspending all "bilateral development assistance programs" with the Asian country in protest over its controversial nuclear proliferation program, although allowing humanitarian food aid.

It was not clear whether the shipments during the past two years were commercial sales or humanitarian aid shipments.

Federal goverment agency AusAid said it had not directly shipped wheat as food aid to any overseas country since 2005.

An AusAid spokeswoman said the aid agency now helped needy countries through cash transfers to organisations such as the World Food Programme, which might buy wheat on behalf of a country.

She was unsure whether the World Food Programme - the food aid arm of the United Nations - had bought Australian wheat for export to North Korea.

The ABS data shows first-time importers of Australian wheat during the past two years included the Black Sea nation of Georgia and the US territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Georgia took 49 tonnes of bagged wheat in both 2010-11 and 2011-12.

Puerto Rico took nearly 500 tonnes of containerised Australian wheat last season.

Its Caribbean neighbour, the Virgin Islands, imported 269 tonnes.

The ABS data also shows Germany, one of the biggest wheat producers in the world, bought Australian wheat in 2010-11.

More than 26,000 tonnes of wheat was shipped to Germany two years ago, mostly in bulk, although 10 tonnes was exported in a container.

They were the first shipments of wheat to Germany in two decades and follow exports to other European nations - Belgium, the UK, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway and Poland - during the past decade.