Asahi Breweries Ltd. is deepening its ties with Carlsberg A/S by signing a Hong Kong marketing pact with the Danish brewer, in its latest move aimed at boosting overseas sales amid weak domestic demand, Dow Jones reported on January, 4.

The Japanese brewer's pact also comes ahead of the expected merger between rivals Kirin Holdings Co. and Suntory Holdings Ltd. this year. The resulting merged company is expected to become much larger than Asahi in sales terms, putting pressure on Asahi to forge new partnerships to compete.

Asahi said this week it aims to double its Hong Kong sales by 2014 via the sales network of Carlsberg's local unit. Investors reacted favorably, pushing Asahi shares up 1.8% to Y1,742 at midday, after touching an intraday high of Y1,747.

Asahi has sealed a number of international sales deals. It already sells its Super Dry beer in Russia through a Carlsberg-affiliated company.

Like other food and beverage makers in Japan, Asahi is working to raise its presence overseas in the face of a gloomy outlook for Japan, with its shrinking population and weak economy. In 2009, Asahi's overseas sales accounted for only about 5% of total sales, even after including its $774 million acquisition of Schweppes, ...More Info

The beer business is growing very well and United Breweries position in it has been improving, Ravi Nedungadi, President & CFO, UB Group, was quoted as saying on January, 5.

“We have in the first nine months of the year clocked a 17+% growth in volumes. We have gained market share,” Nedungadi said in a recent interview. “In the course of the next several months, we hope to roll out Heineken as well as part of the whole US brand portfolio and that will add both to the prestige as well as to the depth of our distribution.”

It is too early days to pass any judgements on the alliance between Heineken and UB, the CFO said, as meetings between the two company managements are slated to happen in the next week or so. But the mood is very upbeat and he is “very positive and confident that the alliance will work out in a very fruitful and constructive way”, Mr. Nedungadi said.

“United Breweries does not have a significant level of debt in its books over and above its normal working capital requirements. The capital expenditure that the company has been incurring over the last several years was actually funded by rights ...More Info

Total beer output of Czech breweries fell by about one-tenth, but consumption of alcohol-free beer in the Czech Republic slightly grew again last year, Jan Vesely, chairman of the Czech Beer and Malt Association, was quoted as saying by CTK on January, 6.

Precise figures on last year's total beer output of Czech breweries are not available yet.

However, the Czech Beer and Malt Association expects a 12 percent drop in exports and a 7 percent fall in sales on the domestic market, which would mean an overall decline in output of almost 10 percent compared with 2008 when Czech brewers produced 19.81 million hectolitres of beer, a drop of 0.5 percent compared with the record year 2007.

On the Czech market, 16.1 million hectolitres of beer from the total output was consumed in 2008, which was a year-on-year fall of 1.3 percent.

As for alcohol-free beer, its total output by Czech brewers amounted to 600,000 hectolitres in 2009 compared with 579,000 hectolitres the previous year. Non-alcoholic beer accounts for almost 4 percent of total beer consumption in the Czech Republic.

Consumption of non-alcoholic beer in the country has grown in the past ten years. In the years to come, consumption of alcohol-free beer should ...More Info

Asahi Breweries Ltd. may report a group pretax profit of a bit more than 92 billion yen for the year ($1 billion), exceeding estimates, Nikkei English News reported on December, 29.

Total sales may fall short of a 3 percent rise to 1.5 trillion yen projected earlier as the domestic beer market slumps, Nikkei said without revealing how it obtained the information.

Dutch brewing giant Heineken has become the sole shareholder in Belarusian brewery Rechitsapivo, Tut.by reported on December, 31.

Heineken has purchased the remaining 9.2% of shares in the company from the Gomel region of Belarus for more than 2.2 bln of Belarusian roubles.

Under the terms of the agreement Heineken will continue to develop the company in 2009-2010.

Heineken Group acquired a 51% stake of OJSC "Rechitsapivo in July 2008 for $9.9 million and later increased its share in the company up to 90.8%.

The Dutch company currently continues the reconstruction of Rechitsa brewery, which is scheduled for completion in April 2010.

In addition to Rechitsapivo, Heineken Belarus owns IZAO "Brewing company" Syabar (Mogilev region).

Apart from a little excitement in the feed barley market lately, the overall US marketing picture for barley continues on the lackadaisical side of things due mainly to the large barley stockpile, Farm & Ranch Guide posted on December, 31.

“We had a little excitement with a run on feed barley here lately, which was kind of a nice surprise in the market. It amounted to a 50 to 60 cent improvement in the feed barley market, which no one really expected,” said Randy Brag at Valley Grain Services in Casselton, N.D. “When you looked at the price of corn, barley was just too cheap. A lot of feeders realized that and started buying.

“Most elevators are now paying around $2.35 for feed barley, but the run up in feed prices did little for the cash malting barley situation. If you can find a malt bid you are lucky.”

The malting barley side of the industry still has a lot of problems to work through, he noted. There is a significant oversupply problem that ranges from having too much malt on hand going on down through the industry to a large stockpile of barley being stored on the farms.

“If you are waiting to ...More Info

More Canadian malting barley may be headed to China this year, Bob Cuthbert, CWB Senior Barley Marketing Program Manager, was quoted as saying by Discover MooseJaw on January, 3.

Demand for malting barley is growing by leaps and bounds in China, Mr. Cuthbert states.

Meanwhile, the domestic Chinese barley crop was weak this last year. Cuthbert notes Australia has also suffered from a number of quality issues, further opening the door to Canadian malting barley. Cuthbert was recently in China to meet with some key customers.

Last year, the CWB exported just under 400,000 tonnes of malt barley to China. Cuthbert says they're looking to exceed that this year.

Enthusiasm for spring barley has come to a shuddering halt, as last year's huge upsurge in plantings created a mountain of over-supply, slashing prices from more than £180/t to less than £80/t, Farmers Weekly Interactive reported on January, 1.

Contracts for 2010 are extremely rare, and even the elite malting growers are wondering whether to plant, although at least one analyst believes growers should take a leap of faith, while others are pointing to the huge area of winter wheat drilled in the UK and Europe, which may help move supply and demand back into balance.

According to Jonathan Arnold of merchant Robin Appel, Hampshire, by harvest 2010 over-production anxieties may be fading with much of the surplus sold for feed, export or intervention.

But it is a huge surplus that needs shifting and maltsters are buying cheap crop now to buffer price reversals. Barley trading at sub-£80/t ex-farm, with negligible premium for malt, is a far cry from the decade-topping £180/t-plus commanded in summer 2008.

DEFRA puts UK’s total barley production in 2009 at 6.74 mln tonnes, 10% up on the previous year's 6.14 mln tonnes. Two factors drove that. First, the sodden 2008 autumn left growers with vast swathes of land undrilled. ...More Info

Stijn D. M. Van Laere, Kevin J. Verstrepen, Johan M. Thevelein, Patrick Vandijck and Freddy R. Delvaux

ABSTRACT Despite all research published on aroma chemistry, the flavour of complex products such as beer and wine cannot be predicted. However, it is well known that the aroma profile of beer and wine is dominated by components that are formed during fermentation. The most important fermentation volatiles in beer are higher alcohols and their acetate esters. In this paper, the current knowledge on the formation of these compounds is summarised. Furthermore, several ways to control the formation of higher alcohols and their esters during fermentation are discussed.
Cerevisia, 33 (2) 2008 http://www.cerevisia.eu