Kingway Brewery Holdings Limited announced on March, 31 its consolidated results for the year ended 31 December 2009.

The Hong Kong-based brewer said its beer sales volume increased by 30% versus 2008, to 833 thousand tonnes. Gross profit reached HK$360.9 mln (+ 28.8% versus 2008), whereas EBITDA grew by 32% to HK$237.61 mln.

The company’s profit for the year amounted to HK$14.52 mln versus a loss of HK$52.1 mln reported for the previous year.

In 2009, the production, distribution and sales of Kingway beer remained to be the core business operations of the group.

Consolidated turnover of the group for the year amounted to HK$1.54 bln (2008 (restated): HK$1.335 bln), representing an increase of 15.3% over last year. The average selling price per tonne of beer decreased by 11.3% over last year, which was primarily attributed to the changes in pricing strategy of the selling prices and a dilution of the weighted average selling price per tonne of beer as a result of the increases in sales volume of beer in those regions outside Guangdong Province.

Sales in Mainland China accounted for 95.4% of the consolidated revenue, representing an increase of 16.5% over last year in terms of revenue, whereas the sales in ...More Info

Cervejaria Petropolis, Brazil’s third-largest brewer, plans to invest USD15.6 mln to increase the production capacity of its Petropolis and Teresopolis facilities, local media reported earlier this week.

The brewing capacity of the Petropolis plant will thus expand by 225% to 55 mln litres, it is presumed.

The company also plans to start brewing its Petra beer at its Teresopolis brewery.

If shareholders of FEMSA do not approve the sale of its beer division to Heineken, the Mexican company will have to pay 200 million dollars for cancellation charge and this will affect the results of the company, such as its financial statements, El Semanario posted on March, 31.

In a press release sent to U.S. Stock Exchange, FEMSA explained that the sale-purchase agreement establishes a fine for the same amount (USD200 mln) in the case they retire or modify the established clauses in the agreement, in order to accept the proposal of the substitute acquisition.

Moreover, the company stated that the transformation of 100% of the operations of FEMSA’s beer division for a stock of 20% in Heineken was approved by the board of administration of the company on December 21, 2009, and published on January 11.

In addition, they will receive 43,018,320 shares from Heineken Holding N.V. and 86,028,019 shares from Heineken Holding N.V. with the obligation to receive 29,172,504 additional shares in a period no longer to five years since the date the agreement is completed. In case Heineken does not fulfil the shares assignment, these could be settled in cash with an important penalization.

Finally, the Mexican beer company ...More Info

Ukraine’s February beer export volume increased by 34.4%, or 5.2 mln litres, versus January 2010, to 20.68 mln litres, Finance.ua reported on April, 2.

As compared to February 2009, the nation exported 21.1% less beer in February 2010.

In January – February 2010, Ukrainian beer export shrank 26.1% in comparison to the same period last year, to 36.06 mln litres.

In 2009, Ukraine’s beer exports fell by 4.2%, whereas beer imports decreased by 19.4%.

The nation’s biggest beer exporter is Kyiv-based Obolon brewery.

Scottish & Newcastle’s (S&N) brewery in Berkshire has shut its doors for the last time after 30 years, BBC reported on April, 2.

The intention to close the former Courage Brewery in Reading was made public in 2008.

S&N, which has since been taken over, said it ended work at the 58-acre site next to the M4 due to an "over-capacity in the UK brewing industry".

"As a business we found that we could take the volume that we produced in Berkshire and put it within the rest of the network," Tom Robinson, general manager of the site, said.

S&N, which has since been taken over by Heineken and Carlsberg, described the move to close the Reading brewery as "the most viable option for going forward".

It came after the company's decision to shut a bottling plant at the Reading site, cutting about 250 jobs.

The staged closure over the last two years has meant many of the brewery’s 362 workers have found new jobs or been redeployed within the company.

World barley output is expected to decline by 3% this year, IGC said in its latest report.

Total area planted to barley is forecast to shrink by 2% to 55 mln ha (56.1 mln ha in the previous crop year), with reductions expected in the EU, the CIS and North Africa. With close to average barley yields expected, total output will hardly exceed 143.4 mln tonnes (147.9 mln tonnes in 2009), IGC experts said.

In the EU, total area sown to barley is forecast to decline by 1.2 mln ha to 12.7 mln ha, the lowest level in the last decade. Discouraged by low prices and changes to the existing intervention scheme that will take effect next year, farmers will switch to other crops, industry experts said.

Areas sown to winter barley will drop by 7% in the EU, with smaller plantings in Germany, France, Italy and Romania. As for spring barley, the drop is expected to reach 9%. On the other hand, a cold March in the majority of European nations may delay sowings of spring barley as well as affect yields.

EU’s total barley output may drop by 7% to 57.4 mln tonnes (61.7 mln tonnes last crop year), or even 56.6 ...More Info

The activity on the French malting barley market is almost nonexistent, La Depeche reported on April, 2.

The offers are limited to the 2010/11 crop. Barley producers are not inspired to negotiations by the current prices. Germany’s barley sowing is progressing well, but the Scandinavian nations are taking their time, so the wait-and-see policy is still dominating the EU markets.

Ewa Sikorska, Tomasz Górecki, Igor V. Khmelinskii, Marek Sikorski and Denis De Keukeleire

J. Inst. Brew. 110(4), 267–275, 2004 ABSTRACT
Total luminescence and synchronous scanning fluorescence spectroscopic techniques were applied for characterization of the intrinsic fluorescence of eight different beers. Spectra were measured using different geometries to reveal the presence of similar fluorescent components. The total luminescence and synchronous fluorescence spectra exhibit a relatively intense shortwavelength emission ascribed to aromatic amino acids and less intense emission in the long-wavelength region, which may originate from B vitamins. Classification of beers based on their synchronous fluorescence spectra was performed using nonparametrical k nearest neighbours method and linear discriminant analysis. Very good discrimination was obtained in both methods with a low classification error. The results demonstrate the potential of fluorescence techniques to characterize and differentiate beers. Key words: Beer, discriminant analysis, synchronous fluorescence spectroscopy, total luminescence spectroscopy. Load full article, 9 pages, 595kb , PDF file