Asahi Brewery builds a plant in Deqing County of Huzhou City, located in east China's Zhejiang Province, Asia Pulse announced on November 30. The total investment of Asahi Beer in Deqing will reach USD 50 million.

The new beer plant, covering an area of 20 hectares, will produce 300,000 tons of beer annually when put into production.

Kamenitza beer brewery plans to invest EUR 1 million by the end of the year for the upgrade of its two factories based in Plovdiv and Haskovo, the company announced on November 28, according to Novinte news Agency.

The money will raise the output capacity of Plovdiv brewery, double-raise the keg-line capacity, expand the storehouse floorage with about 1 500 square meters.

During the first ten months through October, Kamenitza brewery ranked first in terms of sales in Bulgaria. Zagorka and Carlsberg ranked second and third.

Kamenitza AD is part of Interbrew, which was renamed to InBev after the merger of Interbrew and AmBev.

Kamenitza AD brewery holds 30% market share with a diverse brand portfolio which includes international Stella Artois and Becks and local Kamenitza, AstikA, Burgasko , Pleven, Slavena.

Experts speaking at the first ever U.S. Malt and Malting Barley Buyers Conference held Oct. 30 - Nov. 2 in Portland, OR, shared their views on world malting and malt trade in Marketing Year 2005-06 and forecasted malt demand in Year 2010, Idaho Barley commission said this week.

Most of the demand growth for malting barley and malt during the next five years will be in countries with rapidly expanding beer production, including the Far East, particularly China (18% growth), Russia and Eastern Europe (17% growth), South America (17%) growth) and Africa (21% growth).

According the experts’ views the U.S. malt industry currently has excess processing capacity and is well positioned to meet the needs of the expanding Asian and Latin American markets.

With 8 hop-growing cooperatives discontinuing hop production, only 78 hop farms remained in crop year 2004. The average hop acreage farmed by each production cooperative fell from 7.3 ha to 7.1 ha , according to the Barth Report of June 2005.

The hop acreage declined by 12%. The average yield for the aroma varieties rose slightly year on year, while the bitter varieties produced a significantly better yield. The predominantly grown aroma variety Ranny yielded an alpha content of 3.8%, well below the yield produced in 2003 (4.2%). The bitter varieties Smolisty, Podvyazny, and Istrinsky were on a par with the previous year, averaging 5.6%

At the end of April 2005, it was reported that 30 mt from the 2004 crop remained unsold. A reduction in acreage of about 10% to approx. 500 ha is expected for 2005.