Argentinean Government authorised the acquisition of beer brands Bieckert, Palermo and Imperial by Chilean group Compañía Cervecerías Unidas (CCU), Cronista reported April 4.

The three brands were into the hands of Brewing Industrial Company (Cicsa), property of the industrialist Ernesto Gutié¬rrez, who had as well bought them from Quilmes.

In order to face this ope¬ration, CCU Argentina received an extraordi¬nary contribution of capital of $85 million.

This transaction also includes a malt plant in Luján.

At the moment, CCU controls 16% of the Argentinean beer market, dominated by InBev-Quilmes and Brahma, with 68%. With the purchase of Bieckert, Palermo and Imperial, the Chilean group adds another 5.8% of market share. The intention of holding is to set up an aggressive plan of growth in order to become a bigger player in Argentina.

Heineken and Carlsberg (the “Consortium”) welcome the announcement of the European Commission’s approval of the acquisition of selected S&N assets by Heineken in all EU member states with the exception of the Republic of Ireland, Heineken reported in a press release, April 3. The acquisition by Heineken of S&N’s Irish subsidiary, Beamish & Crawford plc ("B&C"), will be referred to the Irish Competition Authority (“ICA”) for consideration.

Today's announcement follows receipt of approval from the European Commission in respect of the acquisition of selected S&N assets by Carlsberg, the expiry of the applicable antitrust waiting period in the United States, and the receipt of approval from the relevant regulatory authorities in Russia and the Ukraine. The Consortium confirms that the antitrust conditions to the acquisition of S&N by Sunrise Acquisitions Limited (the "Acquisition") have now been satisfied and that the referral to the ICA will not delay completion of the Acquisition. Therefore, the Consortium expects that the effective date of the Acquisition will be 28 April 2008.

Heineken believes that the ICA is well positioned and equipped to conduct such an examination. Heineken has fully briefed the ICA on the terms of the Acquisition and expects that the ICA will reach a ...More Info

Grupo Modelo SAB, a Mexican brewer, has seen U.S. sales of its Corona Extra beer drop since a price increase last year gave competitors an edge, the Wall Street Journal said, according to Bloomberg, April 3.

Last year, Mexico City-based Modelo shipped 1.7 percent less Corona to the U.S. over the previous year, the newspaper said, citing Beer Marketer's Insights newsletter.

With the economy slowing this year, sales by volume at food, drug and convenience stores have declined 5.9 percent through Feb. 23, the Journal said, citing Nielsen Co. data.

Corona's problems hurt Anheuser-Busch Cos., which owns about half of Grupo Modelo, the newspaper said. Corona's U.S. importer, Crown Imports LLC, raised Corona prices by as much as 5 percent last year, the Journal said.

Femsa, the largest Coke bottler and brewer in Latin America, is not seeing any negative impact on its beer exports to the United States despite the economic slowdown in Mexico's top trading partner, Reuters reported April 3.

Chief Executive Officer Javier Astaburuaga said the company's exports to the U.S. market, where its sells its Sol, Tecate and Dos Equis beers, was "good, favorable and sustained."

Femsa's beer exports, mainly to the United States, jumped 19.3 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.

"Our performance in the U.S. market continues to be pretty positive," Astaburuaga told the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit on Thursday.

Astaburuaga also said Femsa planned to set up its retail store chain, which sells the company's Coca-Cola products and beers alongside snacks, in Colombia over the next 12 to 18 months.

"It is about setting up a base of around 30 stores, it could be a few more or a few less," Astaburuaga said of Oxxo, the largest convenience store chain in Latin America.

Asked if Femsa planned to focus on Bogota or other main cities, Astaburuaga said: "We are not thinking of a model that has a big reach in terms of cities."

Femsa has 5,500 Oxxo stores in Mexico, dotting the ...More Info

EU domestic malt markets have been calm, but nevertheless purchases continued in a slow and unexcited fashion, according to analysts, March 28. At least two of the large brewing groups are rumoured to be well covered for 2009, the others, large, medium and small brewers seem to buy one piece at a time, thereby not driving up malt and barley markets.

As barley markets declined a bit, also malt prices came down from their top levels for the new season, albeit by a few Euros only. In the central Continental region and in the U.K. prices range from EUR 540,- to 560,- delivered breweries, average price for 2009. Sales in Czech and Slovakia have hardly begun, as last year’s experiences of non-fulfilments of barley contracts increased caution of sellers and buyers.

Historically high malting barley prices for the crops 2007 and 2008 induced farmers in a number of countries to plant more barley than last year and also more than earlier planned for this year, analysts have recently reported.

We still do not expect major changes from last year in France and Germany, but as reported earlier, Denmark may plant up to 100.000 HA more, Sweden 50 – 60.000 HA more, the U.K. 50.000 – 70.000 HA more. What may even be more important is the share of malting barley varieties, which will increase from 75 to 85 % in the U.K. and from 30 to 40 % in Sweden.

The Czech and Slovak Republics had forecast a strong reduction of their spring barley plantings after the disappointing crops of last year, but do report different plans by now, Czech about unchanged, Slovakia plus 5%.

The malting barley market has been disestablished this week with prices which continued to decrease, La Depeche published April 4. Deals have been very limited.

There have been no deals in feed barley this week. The prices were affected by the brutal drop on feed wheat market.

Chinese barley imports in January/February of this calendar year were 234.000 tons and are forecast to remain around 1,5 Mill. tons for the year, analysts have recently reported.

China uses 8 kilos of malt or even less per HL of beer; it uses more and more local barley and also much wheat. It must import quality barley, though, for its premium beer and expected malt exports of 400.000 tons in 2008.

A shortage of a key ingredient in beer has shown that even business competitors can come together over a cold one now and then. Boston Beer Company -- the maker of the Samuel Adams brand -- has agreed to share 20,000 pounds of its hops with craft brewers throughout the country, The Associated Press reported April 2.

A worldwide shortage of hops has left smaller brewers unable to buy the important perennial flower that adds some of the bitterness and aroma to beer.

About six weeks ago Boston Beer sent out notifications to small brewers that it wanted to help them by making available some of its hops at cost. The company said it received 352 requests totaling about 100,000 pounds, but was only able to fill 20 percent of those.

Boston Beer founder Jim Koch says the shortage became acute last year when the hops crop came in below average, the third bad season in a row. He says increased beer consumption has also boosted the demand for hops.

D.E. Evans1, C. Li2, J.K. Eglinton3 1TIAR, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 54, Hobart, Tasmania, 7001, Australia; 2Dept of Agriculture Western Austraia, 3 Baron-Hay Court, Sth Perth, WA 6151, Australia; 3School of Agriculture and Wine, University of Adelaide, Glen Osmond, SA, 5064, Australia

SUMMARY
Data is presented to support the replacement of the diastatic power (DP) malt specification in favour of the measurement of the DP enzymes (DPE), alpha-amylase, limit dextrinase, beta-amylase, and beta-amylase thermostability. The use of the DPE via a multi-linear regression equation predicts ~90% of variation in malt attenuation compared to <50% of variation by DP alone. The measurement of the individual DPE would most likely have a number of advantages over DP or the time consuming AAL parameter for maltsters and their brewer customers. Firstly, the three DPE determinants of fermentability are independently assessed. This is important information as the ratios of alpha-amylase to limit dextrinase to beta-amylase vary between malt samples from the same variety. Knowledge of the levels of these enzymes would allow maltsters to potentially to blend their malt batches more precisely within or between varieties to balance the levels of DPE to better satisfy brewers fermentability expectations. At very least brewers could be fore warned when a delivery of malt was being made that differed from the specifications desired, thus take steps in the brew house to accommodate such changes. The application of these insights in the brewing industry is predicted to result in substantial improvements in brewing consistency and enable more specific quality targets for barley breeders to be defined.
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