Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI.BT) started trading under the ticker "BUD" on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, September 16th, but the world's largest brewer by revenue has no plans to move its headquarters to the U.S., its chief executive said in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires.

"We plan to keep our headquarters in Belgium," said Carlos Brito, AB InBev's Chief Executive in the interview. "What we have here is a secondary listing."

The stock will continue to trade on Euronext Brussels, which will remain AB In Bev's primary listing. The move brings back the former Anheuser-Busch "BUD" symbol to the NYSE. Anheuser-Busch was taken over by Belgium's InBev in a $52 billion deal last year. AB InBev will continue to trade under the symbol "ABI" in Brussels.

"I'm glad we're here, and we're very excited to have U.S. investors be able to invest in our stock," Brito said, noting the broad investor-base Anheuser-Busch had in the U.S.

While there has been some chatter that AB InBev wants to see more consolidation among beer distributors in the U.S., Brito said the company doesn't have plans to push any consolidation as a part of its $2.25 billion cost savings plan for 2008 ...More Info

An average Vietnamese consumed 22 litres of beer in 2008, standing just behind the Thais in Southeast Asia , according to the Vietnam Association of Beer, Alcohol and Beverages. The information was unveiled on September 15 by Nguyen Van Hung, Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Beer, Alcohol and Beverages.

In a report on Vietnam’s food and drink in the first quarter of the year, the Business Monitor International Ltd. (BMI), a global business consultancy company, pointed out that in Vietnam beer sales will remain the primary driver for the drink industry as it accounted for almost 97.9 percent of alcoholic drinks sales in 2008.

The BMI forecast that beer sales is likely to experience the strongest growth of 48.6 percent during the 2008-2013 period due to the high levels of investment from local players and expansion-oriented multinationals.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), beer, alcohol and soft drinks industry make up 21 per cent of the total production value of the country’s food and drink sector and 4.56 per cent of the nation’s industrial production value. It has grow at an average annual rate of 20 percent.

MoIT said that during 2005-2008, the sector’s production costs reached VND27.2 trillion ...More Info

Management Board of Kompania Piwowarska started consultations with the Employee Council and trade unions about the intention to cease production in the Kielce Brewery and to introduce changes in the distribution networks, comprising closing down the distribution sections in the depots in Olsztyn, Toruń and Zielona Góra, as well as reducing the headcount in Kielce, the company communicated September 9th. The planned changes would result in the redundancy of approximately 190 Kompania Piwowarska's employees. New jobs will be created in Białystok, Poznań and Pruszcz Gdański.

Managing director's comment

Gary Haigh, managing director of Kompania Piwowarska, said: ‘This plan has come about as a result of economic reasons. From the beginning of the year, we have witnessed a sales decline in the whole beer category, including KP sales. While our market share is growing, this is because our competitors have been affected by sales declines even more than KP. We are expecting the beer market to keep slowing down and the companies that will be successful long-term are those that react quickest to this dramatic change in the environment to match their production capacity to the market needs and improve the efficiency of their manufacturing and distribution networks. These moves have been taken ...More Info

Dutch brewing giant Heineken has stated that it has stopped the production of beer at Stepan Razin brewery in St. Petersburg, FoodBizIntel communicated on September 14th. All the brands of this company will be transferred to another production site. Instead of the production site the company is planning to establish a logistics center. Analysts believe that this move will help Heineken to reduce the cost of production of Heineken beer in a stagnant market.

Stepan Razin brewery is part of the Heineken group since July 2005. Currently its major regional brands are Kalinkin, Stepan Razin, Peter, Stepan Razin Admiralty, Stepan Razin Special, Stepan Razin Strong, as well as national brands Ohota and Three Bears. In addition, it produces a kvass brand named as Stepan Timofeyevich. According to official data currently Heineken holds a 13% share of the beer market of Russia, while the market share kvass "Stepan Timofeevich" in 14 major cities is 8%.

Most of analysts were skeptical about the prospects of Stepan Razin brewery in Heineken’s ownership, predicting the cease of production. In late 2008, Heineken ha started a reorganization of the site in a logistic terminal with the area of 6 thousand square meters. Now, this ...More Info

Britain has more small breweries than any other major industrialised nation, The Independent cited Good Beer Guide on December 10th.

Despite falling beer sales and pub closures running at a rate of 50 a week, 71 breweries were established in the last year alone, capitalise on demand for quirkier ales. Of the 711 breweries in the UK, West Yorkshire has the most (34), followed by Norfolk (31), Derbyshire and North Yorkshire (both 28) and Devon (27).

Among the new breweries is Morrissey Fox, founded by the actor Neil Morrissey at Marton cum Grafton, near York, and Mill Green, which brews beer with energy from solar panels behind the White Horse in Sudbury, Suffolk.

Good Beer Guide editor Roger Protz said the nationwide total of breweries made the UK "undisputed top brewing country in the world".

"Britain has more small craft breweries per head of population than all other major industrialised countries; but it also offers tremendous choice," he said.

"While most other countries offer mainly mainstream lagers, Britain has enormous diversity – milds, bitters, strong ales, porters, stouts, barley wines, old ales, Christmas ales, spring beers, golden ales and harvest ales to name just a few. This rebirth of British ...More Info

Vienna brewery Ottakringer is to buy back a 17-million-Euro stake from rival Brau-Union/Heineken, the company announced on September 16. Brau-Union acquired the 13.43 per cent share in Ottakringer 11 years ago and was then taken over by Dutch firm Heineken in 2003.

Ottakringer chief Sigi Menz branded the deal "an Ottakringer holiday”. The firm served free beer at its locations in Vienna and St. Pölten yesterday afternoon to celebrate the move.

The deal will see families that control Ottakringer through Ottakringer Holding AG take a 92 per cent stake in the company.

The Wenckheim family will have an interest of 65 per cent, the Menz family 15 per cent and the Pfusterschmid and Trauttenberg families smaller stakes. The remaining eight per cent of shares will be held by small shareholders.

Ottakringer will receive 172,454 common shares and 4,370 preferred shares of its stock from Brau-Union/Heineken on Thursday.

Nico Nusmeier, Heineken’s chief for Central Europe, said his firm had been interested in acquiring Ottakringer but European laws on competition and takeovers had prevented it from going ahead with the move. He added the Wenckheim and Menz families had also said their combined controlling interest was not for sale.

Ottakringer currently has a pending merger with mineral ...More Info

Malt export licence fixations had given the correct picture of shipments to third countries until the end of the crop year 2006/07, when the EU Commission found the licensing no longer necessary. Since many years Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU, had published malt trade numbers by states, which were always higher than the licence figures. Eurostat publishes the figures, which it receives from national administrations. The problem lies in the different application of EU rules. Most countries count the customs clearance at origin as export, others, specifically Belgium apply the place of export. Therefore double counts become part of the statistical system.

During the past crop year 2008/09 there were two obvious “mistakes” in the Eurostat figures: Germany exported to Belgium 29.944 tons, Belgium imported from Germany 142.037 tons. The Netherlands exported to Belgium 16.107 tons, Belgium imported from The Netherlands 34.536 tons. The difference appears to be double counting of German and Dutch exports through the port of Antwerp. The French/Belgian situation seems to be different, because French maltsters really do their customs clearance in Belgium, therefore the sum of Belgian and French exports is probably correct, however, with a larger share of French malt. As shown ...More Info

Barley crop results in the EU were generally better than forecast during spring and summer, market analysts commented on September 1st. Especially in Germany, England and Scandinavia the spring barley harvest in August produced large yields and mostly excellent qualities. As the barley harvest is approaching its end, the final crop number will be more than 62 Mill. tons, only 3 ½ Mill. tons less than last year’s record crop. Most EU crop estimates are official government numbers by now, but we had to use the HGCA numbers for the U.K. and private yield estimates for Denmark and Sweden. The official figure of a crop of 7,477 Mill. tons in Spain is still disbelieved by many other sources and may turn out smaller in the end.

The quality of spring barley is extremely good in France, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. Large grain size, 92 - 95 % above 2,5 mm from the combine, low to very low protein, 9 – 11 %, low moisture with virtually no fusarium or other anomalies. Winter barley qualities are just as good in France and Germany. The U.K. did not fare quite as well, but will have enough good quality malting barley as well. ...More Info

Winter cropping regions in Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria received average to above average winter rainfall. Conversely, most of Queensland and northern New South Wales received below to very much below average winter rainfall, with August being a particularly dry month across both states. The lack of rainfall, combined with above average temperatures, have resulted in crops in many areas of the two states (including southern and central New South Wales) suffering moisture stress in the critical spring growth phase.

Total winter crop production in 2009-10 is forecast to be around 36 million tonnes. This is an upward revision from ABARE’s June 2009 forecast of 34.8 million tonnes. Dry seasonal conditions have resulted in a downward revision of forecast production for both New South Wales and Queensland. However, this has been more than offset by upward revisions for Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. The total area sown to winter crops in 2009-10 is estimated to have increased by 2 per cent to slightly more than 22.2 million hectares

Barley production in 2009-10 is forecast to be around 7.9 million tonnes, a 16 per cent increase from the previous season, ABARE stated in its latest Crop Report.

New South Wales Barley production in ...More Info

Climatologist Martin Mozny of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute and his team have found that the quality of Saaz hops - the delicate variety used to make pilsner lager - has been decreasing in recent years, New Scientist cited Agricultural and Forest Meteorology on September 13th. They say the culprit is climate change in the form of increased air temperature.

Mozny's team used a high-resolution dataset of weather patterns, crop yield and hop quality to estimate the impact of climate change on Saaz hops in the Czech Republic between 1954 and 2006. Best-quality Saaz hops contain about 5 per cent alpha acid, the compound that produces the delicate, bitter taste of pilsners.

The study found that the concentration of alpha acids in Saaz hops has fallen by 0.06 per cent a year since 1954, and models of hop yields and quality under future global warming scenarios predict bigger decreases.

But this isn't an isolated case, the hop growing regions of eastern Germany and central Slovakia have noticed similar changes in their crops.

It's not just Czech hops that are at stake here, says Francesco Tubiello, a crop specialist at the European Commission and a lead author of the agriculture chapter of the IPCC Fourth ...More Info

Hans Christian ALLER, Jeppe KIELDSEN and Carsten Wijngaard JORGENSEN

This article has been published courtesy of the European Brewery Convention (EBC). Abstract:
Experience shows that in day-to-day brewery operation, improvements in fresh flavour and flavour stability are often the result of several minor process adjustments. Due to the large number of variables involved in producing beer it can be difficult to demonstrate the influence of individual adjustments in full-scale production, and it can be difficult to conclude what are the most relevant factors that cause variation in beer quality. A powerful method to overcome this problem is to use Multivariate Statistical Analysis (MVA) to analyse data with the purpose of taking qualified decisions regarding modifications in process and raw material specifications. In the method described, data from full scale trial and control beers are evaluated by multivariate analysis with the aim of finding the key process changes influencing flavour stability. Our results show an improvement in fresh and aged beer flavour and a reduction in concentration of several staling descriptors e.g. Trans-2-Nonenal (T2N). The outcome of such flavour improvement projects using MVA will to our experience enhance the potential for a stronger position in the market due to improved flavour stability and thereby drinkability. We propose that the method described is used as an active tool to support marketing in promoting premium brands. The following material is based on data from 9 flavour improvement projects carried out by ALECTIA Brew over the past 6 years. Load full article from site www.cerevisia.eu