Asahi Breweries Ltd. China representative said the company presently does not consider adding or reducing holding in Tsingtao Brewery Company Limited, SinoCast reported on June, 12.

Approved by the Ministry of Commerce of China, Asahi Breweries, a leading Japanese manufacturer of alcoholic beverages, has finished buying a total of 260 million H-shares in the Chinese brewer, taking 19.99% of the latter's capital stock.

As early as 1994, the Japanese company invested in the establishment of beer factories in Yantai City, Beijing, Hangzhou City, Shenzhen City, and Quanzhou City in China in succession and built two beverage factories with local companies including Tsingtao Brewery. However, this does not help the foreign company scramble for more market shares in China.

So, it has to join hands with Tsingtao Brewery, China’s No. 2 brewer, which is expected to be a survival on the Chinese beer market, in order to consolidate its presence.

Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world's largest brewer based in Leuven, Belgium, plans to issue a benchmark eight-year sterling bond, IFR reported on June, 12.

Guidance has been set at gilts plus around 330 basis points, said IFR Markets, a Thomson Reuters online news and market analysis service.

Barclays, JP Morgan, Royal Bank of Scotland and Banco Santander have been named to manage the deal, IFR said.

AB InBev is rated BBB+ by Standard & Poor's and Baa2 by Moody's Investors Service.

Japan’s beer shipments in May dropped 3.1% from a year earlier to 38.92 mln cases, Japan Times reported on June, 11.

This was the first drop in three months, partly due to fewer shipment days than the previous year, brewers and the Brewers Association of Japan claimed.

Shipments to restaurants declined, while those in Osaka and its vicinity were also sluggish in the reporting month, indicating consumers refrained from going out amid the H1N1 swine flu epidemic that hit the region.

Of the total beer shipments, conventional beer declined 7.3 percent and "happoshu" low-malt beer 11.0 percent. But shipments of lower-priced "third-category beer" increased 13.6 percent.

Among brewers, shipments decreased about 9 percent for Suntory Liquors Ltd., about 3 percent for Kirin Brewery Co. and about 2.5 percent for Asahi Breweries Ltd. Sapporo Breweries Ltd., however, saw an increase of about 3 percent on the strength of brisk third-category beer sales.

One case contains 20 633-milliliter bottles.

Turkish brewer Efes intends to more than halve investments in production in Russia this year, Chief Executive Officer Alejandro Jimenez was quoted as saying by Strana.ru on June, 10.

“Last year, we invested about $105 mln in expanding production in Russia in order to create a base for sales growth this year,” he said. In 2009, the company plans to reduce investments to $40-50 mln.

The investments will be made in increasing malting capacities as well as in different eco projects, Mr. Jimenez said.

Besides, the CEO shared that the company expects Russia’s beer market to fall by 2-6% as compared to 2008. Previously, Efes had said the drop would be no more than 2%, but the first quarter results have corrected the forecasts – the market shrunk by 7% in January – March 2009.

Russia accounts for more than 80% of Efes’ sales. In the first quarter, the brewer’s sales in Russia fell by 5.7%, its market share increased to 9.3% versus 9.2% a year ago (Nielsen).

“Good weather inspires confidence in the future results. Sales will grow by the end of the year,” Jimenez said.

Efes owns five breweries and four malting plants in Russia. The total brewing capacity amounts to 25 mln hl, ...More Info

Labatt Brewing Company Limited and Brick Brewing Company have reached a settlement in the trade mark infringement suit filed by the former, CNW reported on June, 11.

Labatt Brewing has been seeking damages on three issues relating to Labatt's Brava and Brick's Red Baron: trade-mark and copyright infringement, causing confusion to the consumer, and causing Labatt financial harm.

Under the settlement, Brick will change Red Baron's label and secondary packaging effective in the near future. Brava and Red Baron are both sold in clear bottles and Red Baron had recently introduced both a label and secondary packaging that Labatt claimed was creating confusion among consumers and contaminated Brava's bottle "float" requiring manual bottle sorting by Labatt.

Charlie Angelakos, Vice President of Corporate Affairs for Labatt said "We are pleased to be able to reach this settlement amicably with Brick. We make a significant investment in our brands in order to connect with consumers and the settlement will maintain Brava's unique graphic character."

Brick's President and CEO, George Croft commented "We will use the opportunity presented by this settlement to introduce a new look for Red Baron. We too are satisfied that an agreement was reached quickly and without the need to resort to a court ...More Info

According to the governor of Russia’s Yaroslavl region, local farmers are planning to expand barley production as a new malting plant will be launched by Baltika Breweries next week, Interfax-Russia reported on June, 10.

“We talked to Baltika Breweries top managers during the World Grain Forum [held on June 6-7 in Saint-Petersburg]. The company has scheduled for June 18the inauguration of a malthouse at its Yaroslavl beer plant. It is a very important event for us, because the malthouse will require about 150 thousand tonnes of malting barley annually. We will try to cover part of the demand by malting barley produced on farms of our region,” Sergei Vahrukov said.

The government said local authorities and farmers will start working on the project already this month.

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has left unchanged its forecast of world’s barley trade in 2009/10, at 17.18 mln metric tons (the same as in 2008/09).

In its World: Grain Markets and Trade report published this month, USDA reduced its estimates of barley production is Australia and Canada in 2009/10 (from 1.93 mln metric tons in May to 1.60 mln this month and from 10.7 mln metric tons to 10 mln respectively).

EU-27 barley production estimate was reduced by 3.24 mln tons to 60.98 mln in the next crop year.

Russia’s barley production forecast was increased to 16.5 mln metric tons (16.0 mln in the last month’s report).

World total barley production forecast was reduced from 146.27 mln metric tons to 142.90 mln this month. World’s ending stocks are prognosticated to amount to 28.46 mln tons (32.0 mln in May forecast).

The CWB released on June, 11 its preliminary crop forecasts, projecting a western Canadian wheat, durum and barley crop of 29.7 million tonnes in the 2009 crop year, down almost 20 per cent from last year’s 36.7 million tonnes and significantly below the five-year average of 33.9 million tonnes.

“Cold weather across the Prairies this spring has had a detrimental effect on planting and early crop development in most growing regions,” said Bruce Burnett, CWB director of weather and market analysis, at the annual CWB grain industry briefing today. “In addition, soil moisture levels are dangerously low in parts of Alberta and western Saskatchewan, where dry conditions have persisted since last fall.”

While the western Prairies are abnormally dry, Manitoba has been excessively wet this spring, with seeding still incomplete. Without ideal growing conditions for the remainder of the crop year, below-average production is likely for Western Canada.

Wheat, durum and barley crops are currently about 10 days to two weeks behind normal development due to the cold weather. Production estimates have dropped significantly in the past two weeks from what had been average yield expectations. “As cool weather delays crop emergence, the risk of reduced quality or frost damage this fall ...More Info

A top-yielding spring barley variety used in beer-making has scooped two prestigious industry achievements in the same month, FarmingUK reported on June, 12.

Quench, from Syngenta Seeds, has just been awarded the prestigious Cereal Cup by the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) as well as also progressing to Full Approval for Brewing on the Institute of Brewing and Distilling (IBD) variety list.

"Full IBD Approval for brewing means the variety has satisfied the stringent quality criteria demanded by end users," says Robert Hiles, the Global Malting Barley Business Manager for Syngenta Seeds.

"Equally, the NIAB Cereal Cup is an extremely prestigious award for a variety to receive from a farming industry viewpoint. It is one which has been won by some highly successful varieties in the past.

"We feel truly honoured that the industry has sought to recognise Quench in this way. Quench already has an unbeaten UK treated yield figure among spring malting barley varieties on the HGCA Recommended List for 2009. Now, this latest news should give extra confidence to growers who are already growing it, or those who are looking to grow it for the first time."

As well as becoming a successful variety in the UK, Mr Hiles ...More Info

Adrian Forster

Introduction:
Today, production and storage of hop products largely take place under defined conditions. Special care is taken that negative influences - such as the presence of oxygen and high temperatures - on the quality are kept to a minimum. Comprehensive documentation on this topic is available (1). On the other hand, there is still little or no interest - as regards transport conditions. Temperature records during long- lasting transportation to Asian and South American countries, however, give rise to further, more intensive investigation. The problem of excessive temperatures, to which hop pellets are sometimes exposed, has already been discussed in a previous paper (2). These results can be supplemented by the following observations and investigations. Load full article, 11 pages, 70 Kb, PDF file