Foster's Group Ltd, Australia's biggest brewer, traded in line with expectations in its first quarter, adjusted for currency impacts, Reuters cited a company report on October, 21.

The company's results last year were helped by a weaker Australian dollar, but this year it is likely to be hit by the currency's sharp rise against the U.S. dollar.

Analysts on average are forecasting 5 percent profit growth to A$765 million ($704 million) for the year to June 2010, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Foster’s gets more than a third of sales from overseas, with each 1 cent increase against the U.S. dollar cutting pretax earnings by A$3.6 million ($3.3 million). Its pretax profit was little changed at A$997 million in the 12 months to June 30. The currency this month traded at more than 93 U.S. cents and almost 58 pence.

The company said the Australian beer unit is benefiting from “positive market conditions and earnings momentum remains strong,” also without providing specific profit numbers.

Foster’s and the Lion Nathan unit of Kirin Holdings Co. control more than 90 percent of the Australian beer market.

New brews such as Pure Blonde are increasing sales, helping Foster’s gain three of the five fastest growing beers in ...More Info

Brewing giant SABMiller is in talks with FEMSA's family shareholders about an equity stake in an enlarged group, Reuters cited an undisclosed source on October, 16.

The London-based SABMiller is already ahead of rival Heineken to acquire FEMSA's $7.5 billion plus beer unit as it has the flexibility and firepower to offer the controlling families a continuing interest in the brewer.

"The FEMSA families are talking to SABMiller and seem keen to maintain an interest. So a move to include them is just the kind of deal that SABMiller has done in the past and can do in the future," said the source, who has knowledge of the situation.

SABMiller declined to comment on its interest in FEMSA.

SABMiller and Heineken, the world's No.2 and No.3 biggest brewers, are both interested in the Mexican brewer, but the Dutch brewer has high debts and limited ability to issue shares with the Heineken family still firmly in control.

"For SABMiller, FEMSA ticks all the boxes for deals it likes to do - it's emerging markets, it's great growth potential and it can construct a cash and shares deal. That puts SABMiller very much as the favorite," said one industry analyst.

The London brewer earns 90 percent of its ...More Info

As Malaysia’s brewery sector is not expected to see an alcohol (beer) excise duty hike this year, it appears to have all chances to improve in 2010, OSD Research communicated on October, 21.

The positive sentiment is in view of softer raw material prices and the upcoming 2010 World Cup football season, OSK said in a research note.

"We expect the alcohol excise duty to remain at status quo of RM7.40 per litre. The key factor for this reasoning is that, the current level is deemed very high," the research house said.

It stated that should this be the case during the tabling of the Budget 2010 on October, 23, it would be the fourth consecutive year, that excise duty on alcohol had been left unchanged since the last hike in 2005.

OSK also said any excise duty rate hike - which translates into an upward price revision as well - will cause a cutback in consumption, which would in turn lead to a reduction in excise duty revenue collection.

"Assuming that the excise duty remains unchanged, volume in the malt-liquor-market may well see another round of surge in sales. Unchanged excise duty rates do in fact boost consumption levels in the long term," it ...More Info

Canada’s leading beer-maker Molson Coors Brewing Co. has acquired the Vancouver-based Granville Island Brewing Co., The Globe and Mail reported on October, 19.

The big-name brand is trying to further capitalize on the burgeoning popularity of niche names, industry observers commented.

Granville Island – founded in 1984 on the island of the same name in False Creek just south of downtown Vancouver, and billed as Canada's first microbrewer – was sold five years later to a firm that is now part of Canadian wine conglomerate Andrew Peller Ltd.

At Andrew Peller, Granville Island was an odd fit in a portfolio of wines. So when Molson – and its own craft brewer Creemore Springs – came knocking, a deal was made.

Creemore, which Molson bought in 2005 and is the entity making the acquisition, said it doesn't plan changes at Granville Island but does want to use the company as a platform for Creemore expansion.

“Creemore understands and appreciates what is special about the Granville Island Brewing brands,” said Jason Moore, president of Creemore Springs. “These brands are true authentic craft beers.”

The price of the deal was not disclosed.

Creemore is an established name among Ontario beer drinkers, and the company recently starting selling product in Alberta ...More Info

Japanese Kirin will maintain a public company-style board for its new subsidiary Lion Nathan, including retaining current Lion Nathan independent chairman Geoff Ricketts, as it seeks to compete in new beverage and food segments as well as improve its current offering, The Age posted on October, 19.

October, 21 has been chosen as the day when Lion Nathan, whose shares have already been removed from the ASX, will cease to exist as it is merged with National Foods following the A$3.5 billion takeover by the Japanese multinational.

When fused with National Foods, the dairy processing business Kirin purchased for A$2.7 billion in 2007, the new business will have annual revenue of A$5.7 billion.

It will be the biggest Australian supplier to market heavyweights Coles and Woolworths, generating sales from its expanded portfolio which takes in brands such as XXXX, Toohey's and Boag's beers, Berri fruit juices, Pura milk, Yoplait yoghurt and Coon cheese.

Current Lion Nathan chief executive Rob Murray, who will lead the merged business, said he was keen to preserve the public company discipline ''so that we really keep as far as we can that performance edge that I think Lion had. We will retain a board (and) I will report to ...More Info

“Budweiser case” has returned to court (to the London court of appeal, to be more precise) as AB InBev used a 2005 European directive claim the Czech Budweiser's trademark on the name was invalid, The Guardian reported on October, 20.

With this action, the American division of the Belgian brewery claimed to have "stolen a march" on its long-standing foe, a tactic the Czech brewers claim was "so sneaky, so unfair, that English law should step in".

The epic squabble was believed to have been settled in the UK in 2000 when the court of appeal ruled the two companies could share the names Bud and Budweiser.

But in 2005 the US brewer used the newly introduced European trademark directive to attempt to sidestep the earlier ruling and launch fresh legal action, claiming the name for itself.

The company argued that the directive said a trademark was invalid if it was identical to one registered at an earlier date. The Czech brewer applied to register Budweiser in 1989, but the US company had applied in 1979.

Budweiser US also said another section of the directive meant their rivals could not challenge their claim because of a time limit.

Lords Justices Jacob and Ward, with Mr Justice ...More Info

The present situation in the brewing and malting industries is a result of the fact that brewers became much too optimistic about the future development of beer markets in the past, an analysts’ research note said earlier this month.

When the economic crisis started, brewers were sitting on wrong production programs, large stocks of beer, packing and raw materials, on equally oversized purchase commitments for malt, adjuncts, bottles, cans etc.

As beer sales dropped, high malt prices induced brewers to use less malt and more adjuncts. Finance became a major problem, not only for those brewers, who had invested huge sums into new acquisitions. As a consequence brewers reduced their own stocks to a bare minimum, delayed and even tried to cancel purchase commitments and issued much smaller and even no purchase orders for future needs. That created a major hole for malt (and other) demand, estimates for the EU range from three to six months.

Industry experts believe that stock reduction, lower beer sales and larger usage of adjuncts cannot produce a larger hole than a three months’ demand, because beer production in Europe was down 1% in 2008 and is estimated down 3 – 4% in 2009 (minus 5 – ...More Info

FranceAgriMer said on October, 14 that it has revised its estimate for the nation’s 2009/10 to more than 12.9 mln tonnes (+ 0.2 mln tonnes from the last month report, + 0.7 mln as compared to the 2008 crop).

According to analysts’ estimates, about 12.3 mln tonnes will be available on the market, including last season’s ending stock of 1.6 mln tonnes and 40,000 tonnes which are expected to be imported in France this marketing year. As compared to 2008/09, the 2009/10 barley stock is 1.6 mln tonnes larger.

France’s domestic barley consumption estimate has remained unchanged from last month’s 2.6 mln tonnes, of which 1.6 mln tonnes to be consumed by the animal feed manufacturing industry.

Sales to other EU nations are expected to reach 4 mln tonnes (+ 270,000 tonnes versus September estimate), which is almost the same as last year. There are good prospects for exports of French barley in Benelux due to smaller competitiveness of the UK and Denmark on this destination.

The estimate for exports to third countries has been maintained at 1.1 mln tonnes (- 0.1 mln tonnes versus 2008/09).

FranceAgriMer experts expect the country’s ending stock to amount to 3.4 mln tonnes of barley, much more than last season’s.

Tomáš Horák, Vladimír Kellner, Jiří Čulík, Marie Jurková and Pavel Čejka

Abstract:
J. Inst. Brew. 113(2), 154–158, 2007 This work presents the development of a simple, rapid and low cost method for the determination of some beer flavours as esters such as isoamyl acetate, ethyl caproate, ethyl caprylate, phenyl acetate, ethyl caprate, phenylethyl acetate, ethyl laurate, ethyl myristate and ethyl palmitate using stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE). The combination of this extraction technique with solvent back extraction and subsequent gas chromatographic analysis with flame ionisation detection was used for the determination of these compounds. The effects of different mixtures of organic solvents and the influence of sampling time and time of solvent back extraction were studied. An optimum procedure for the SBSE method was developed. The method had high repeatability (RSD 2.1–7.3%), good linearity (the correlation coefficients were higher than 0.9995 for quadratic fit over the concentration range from 0.015 to 30 mg/L) and acceptable recoveries (78–107%) and precision (RSD < 7.3%). Key words: Beer, beer flavours, solvent back extraction, stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE). Load full article, 5 pages, 799 kb , PDF file