Affinity Equity Partners Ltd. and KKR & Co. were picked to take part in a new round of bidding for Anheuser-Busch InBev NV’s Korean beer unit, Bloomberg cited on March, 11 five people with knowledge of the matter.

An initial offer from Lotte Group, operator of South Korea’s largest department-store chain, was rejected as too low, two people said, declining to be identified because the talks are private.

AB InBev may have to accept a lower price for Seoul-based Oriental Brewery than the $2 billion it’s been seeking, the people said. The world’s largest brewer, created when InBev bought Budweiser maker Anheuser-Busch Cos. for $52 billion last year, faces waning demand for beer as it tries to sell assets to repay debt stemming from the purchase.

“It’s a difficult climate to sell brewing assets in,” said Jan Meijer, an analyst at Theodoor Gilissen Bankiers NV in Brussels who rates AB InBev “sell.” Still, “AB InBev can afford to wait. There could still be a surprising sale of another asset.”

A first deadline for bids for Oriental expired in February. AB InBev Chief Financial Officer Felipe Dutra said March 6 there’s interest in the “five or six” assets up for sale and the disposals ...More Info

The Boston Beer Company, Inc. said on March, 10 its core product depletions increased by 2% and net revenue grew by 13% in the fourth quarter 2008.

The brewer’s net income for the fourth quarter was $3.6 million, or $0.25 per diluted share, a decrease of 46%, or $0.21 per diluted share, from the fourth quarter of 2007, primarily driven by increased costs of raw and packaging materials, Pennsylvania Brewery costs which include start-up expenses, and an asset impairment charge relating to investments in the Latrobe Brewery.

Net revenue for the fourth quarter of 2008 was $103.8 million, an increase of $11.6 million, or 13%, over the same period last year, primarily due to volume and pricing gains, Boston Beer said.

Jim Koch, Chairman and Founder of the Company, commented, "We reported 2% depletions growth in the fourth quarter, bringing depletions growth for the second half of 2008 to 7%, as compared to 10% depletions growth in the first half of 2008. Our trends in the first two months of 2009 have slowed slightly from the fourth quarter and while the better beer category appears reasonably healthy, we believe we may be losing share in recent months as the drinker is faced with ...More Info

Vijay Mallya-led United Breweries Group is in talks to sell a portion of its 37.5% equity in the group’s flagship beer company, United Breweries Ltd (UBL), to its partner Heineken NV, the Mint reported on March, 7, citing two unidentified bankers.

The Indian investment banking arm of Swiss bank UBS AG is advising UB Group in the deal, while Heineken is being advised by NM Rothschild and Sons Ltd, according to sources that declined to be named because the talks are still at an early stage.

However, they clarified that “the current talks do not involve the Kingfisher brand as the UB Group wants to retain its mineral water as well as aviation business under this brand”.

The UB Group needs cash. The six listed companies in the group have a combined debt of Rs14,231 crore, higher than their market capitalization. The group is currently also in talks with three large multinational liquor firms, including the world’s largest spirits firm Diageo Plc., to offload a significant stake in group company United Spirits Ltd (USL).

Heineken currently holds a stake equal to UB Group in UBL. The Dutch firm inherited this stake after acquiring UB Groups’s long-time partner Scottish and Newcastle, in a $15.4 billion ...More Info

Baltika Breweries, Russia’s leading beer producer, has doubled its exports to China in 2008, ChinaPRO reported on March, 10.

The company’s exports to China were more than 1 mln litres, whereas its domestic beer sales fell by 0.4% last year.

Oleg Alekhin, Baltika’s representative in China, declined to explain how the company managed to double its beer sales in its eastern neighbour in a year of crisis.

Baltika Breweries entered the Chinese market four years ago, starting its expansion with the Shandong and Heilongjiang provinces, and till now is the only Russian company exporting beer to China.

In 2008, the main areas of Baltika’s exports were Beijing and the provinces of Shandong, Shaanxi, Heilongjiang, Hainan, and Liaoning. According to the company estimates, exports to China represent 4.3% of its total beer exports.

In China, Baltika’s production is positioned in the super premium segment and is sold in several large retail networks as well as in restaurants and bars. The beer is supplied by the company’s St. Petersburg brewery and stickers in Chinese are pasted on the bottles already in China.

The average price of a 0.5l bottle of Baltika beer in supermarkets is 12 yuan (about $1.75). This is almost three times as expensive ...More Info

Canada’s areas planted to barley in 2009/2010 are expected to be relatively unchanged from 2008, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada communicated on March, 6.

The outlook assumes normal precipitation, abandonment and quality and that average yields will decrease to the trend level.

For 2008-09, Canada’s barley exports are forecast to fall by 36% since 2007-08, due to lower exports of feed barley. Carry-out stocks are projected to rise by 34%. Feed barley prices are expected to average about 20% below last year.

For 2009-10, seeded area is forecast to be unchanged from 2008 but lower yields are expected to reduce production by 10%.

Canada’s total barley supply is forecast to fall by 4%.

Barley production is trending upward in the United States, including North Dakota and Montana, while Minnesota has kept acres low and about the same over the past two years, the Farm & Ranch Guide posted on March, 9.

“The last three years, there has been a general modest increase in barley production. North Dakota has increased harvested acres from 1.39 million in 2007 to 1.54 million. Montana has increased acres from 720,000 in 2007 to 740,000 in 2008. Minnesota has stayed at 110,000 harvested acres over the past two years,” Steve Edwardson, executive director of the North Dakota Barley Council, said.

The reason for the upward production trends not only in this region but in the U.S. as a whole has been a depletion of barley stocks from 2003 to 2005. In addition, with the higher price of corn, barley has been a substitute for feed.

“In southwestern North Dakota we've had some high test weights, and in the eastern regions, higher yields by 8 to 10 bushels per acre compensated for a lower test weight,” Edwardson said.

Japan began helping barley growers out with a good market and nice prices in 2006 to 2007. However, in 2008, prices softened and “Japan ran out ...More Info

Bruce Burnett, the Canadian Wheat Board’s Director of weather and market analysis, says malting barley will see a drop off from last year's exceptional crop in terms of production and quality, the MooseJaw reported on March, 9.

"I think they key market factor coming up is going to be the situation on Australia. They've undergone about 2-3 years of drought, which has hurt their barley production and certainly hurt their selection rate in malting barley this year. If we see a break in that drought that certainly would cause some pressures,” Mr. Burnett said.

“We're looking at a downward movement in the malting barley prices - again when you compare it with history, this would be about the third highest poll return on record, if realized this year,” he added.

Ukraine’s hops industry sales further worsened in 2009, dsnews.ua reported on March, 10.

The nation’s hops growers blame foreign rivals for intercepting profitable customers, while Ukrainian brewers advise them to work on the quality of their products.

Since the beginning of the season, Ukrainian hops growers have managed to sell less than a third of their 2008 crop (about 300 tonnes). And even the few potential buyers who are ready to purchase the merchandise offer very low prices. “We have to sell hops for UAH 25 – 27 thousand per tonne, whereas at the beginning of the season the price was UAH 100 thousand per tonne. This reduction is explained by the great number of intermediaries on the market, who have already divided among themselves the end customers of Ukrainian hops. The nation’s agrarians have no access to the final buyers” Ivan Doskoch, General Director of NVP Zapad-Khmel said.

Analysts believe that sale problems may significantly diminish the attractiveness of the crop, which will lead to further reduction in the areas planted to hops. Over the last three years, Ukraine’s hops areas were reduced by 300 ha to 900 ha and some farms have completely stopped growing the crop.

Pirkko Forssell, Hanna Kontkanen, Henk A. Schols, Sandra Hinz, Vincent G.H. Eijsink, Janneke Treimo, Jim A. Robertson, Keith W. Waldron, Craig B. Faulds and Johanna Buchert

Abstract:
J. Inst. Brew. 114(4), 306–314, 2008 In this work four commercial cellulase-hemicellulase mixtures with different activity profiles were used for solubilization of carbohydrates from brewers’ spent grain (BSG). After the enzyme treatment, both the solubilised fraction and the unhydrolysed residue were characterized. Treatment with 5,000 nkat/g xylanase for 5 h at 50°C resulted in the solubilisation of 13–14% of the BSG dry weight as monosaccharides. This corresponded to the solubilisation of 26–28% of the original carbohydrates and 30–34% of original arabinoxylans, depending on the enzyme cocktail used. The relatively low hydrolysis level indicates that the majority of the BSG biomass is rather recalcitrant towards the cellulose-hemicellulase enzyme mixtures applied in this study. The enzyme activity profile had a crucial impact on the chemistry of the oligosaccharides produced through the solubilisation of BSG. The presence of feruloyl esterase (FAE) activity in the enzyme cocktail resulted in the production of free ferulic acid, arabinoxylo-oligosaccharides and their corresponding monomers. However, when the enzyme mixture was devoid of FAE activity, ferulic acid was still bound to the oligosaccharides. The unhydrolysed fraction was still found to contain over 40% of carbohydrates after enzymatic treatment despite the extensive enzyme dosages used. The protein fraction remained largely unaffected (i.e. insoluble) by the carbohydrate-disrupting enzyme treatments. In addition to the recalcitrant carbohydrates, the residue was enriched with lignin and lipid type structures. Key words: brewers’ spent grain, cellulase, hydrolysis, xylanase. Load full article, 9 pages, 4748 Kb, PDF file