Local company Didi Puhi said it has launched a new beer factory in its home town of Pleven, Northern Bulgaria, according to Dnevnik, May 18.

The brewery, located on a 5,000 sq m plot in the Pleven industrial zone, cost 5 mln levs (about EUR 2.5 mln). The beer production licenses Czech technology and is based on Czech malts. The lager will be marketed under the brand Ataman in 1 liter glass containers and 2 liter PET containers.

In its first year of operation, the brewery will produce 50,000 hectoliters for distribution in the Pleven region. Output will gradually reach 100,000-120,000 hectoliters a year.

The talk of possible resurrection of beer production in Pleven started 2 years ago when InBev, the world's biggest brewer by volume, shifted its regional operations from the local Plevensko Pivo brewery to production facilities in Southern Bulgaria.

Didi Puhi is a licensed grain traders and importer of malt products.

Eurostat published the malt export numbers for 2006: 2.374 million tonnes to third countries, 1.284 million tonnes intra-EU.

Regrettably these figures are wrong again, market analysts commented on May 2nd. During the year 2006 malt exporters booked licences for 1.954 million tonnes, 418,000 tonnes less the export statistics show, and exports without licences are not possible.

The major or even only source of error is Belgium, where shipments of French, German, Dutch and British malt through the port of Antwerp are registered as Belgian exports, but they are also counted in their countries of origin. Belgium has a malting capacity of 750,000 tonnes, but exported 1.32 million tonnes in 2006 as per Eurostat.

The wrong accounting makes also comparisons of countries of destination useless, especially overseas countries served through Belgian ports. The EU licence figures remain the only valid statistics of malt exports.

Soufflet Malt Romania, subsidiary of French malt producer – Soufflet, announced a 2006 turnover of 54.6 mil lei (15 mil Euro), 21.5% higher than in 2005 and a gross profit of 2.7 mil lei, 3.5 times bigger than in 2005, Ziarul Financiar published May 17.

Soufflet has malt-houses in Pitesti and Buzau and silos in Pitesti, Buzau and Timisoara.

The company announced another production unity set-up in autumn 2008 in Buzau, an investment estimated at 46 mil Euro.

Soufflet Group is the biggest European malt producer and the third biggest miller in Europe.

Old crop barley markets are completely dormant; there is no further demand and few, mostly unattractive offers, market analysts commented May 2nd.

“We will never know exactly, how the large deficit of crop 2006 was covered, but there exist incredible stories about sprouted barley, FAQ (=feed) barley, barley sold and transported from one corner of Europe to another, and also imports, from Argentina, Uruguay and Ukraine.

France had a very good crop last year and finally delivered large quantities of spring and winter barley to the EU deficit countries. Maybe most important, brewers and maltsters covered at least a one month demand less than in normal years, hoping for a better supply and offer of barley of crop 2007.

Soil moisture is excellent, the melting of the snowpack in Northern Saskatchewan created local flooding and delays planting.

The problem of Canada is another one: In a plebiscite of the Western Provinces farmers voted for an optional marketing of their barley, through the CWB and the open market. The government wants to put a relevant regulation in force as of August 1, and the CWB has not published a PRO for the crop 2007 any more.

The question is, what will happen to the CWB sales of old and new crop barley, will they be executed? Legal battles between government, the CWB, trade and maltsters are threatening, meantime trade of malting barley has stopped completely. (Domestic trade of feed barley had been out the CWB’s hands since years). As Canada hopes for a crop of 13 million tonnes versus 10 million tonnes last year, a clarification of the situation is urgent.

Neighbour USA, where barley has become a specialty crop for the brewing and malting industry, reports excellent growing conditions.