1. Trading offer & request

At this moment there is one OFFER for 5000 tons of malt and one REQUEST for 260 tons of barley on the trading portal www.e-malt.com

• Offer for 1-5000 mtons of malt, 2RS Scarlet/Aspen, crop 2003, bulk, delivery 1/10/2003 - 31/5/2004, at EUR 271.00 /mton, FOB Antwerp. (to see and make a bid to the malt offer, please click here to view code MF2705P1522)
  
  
• Request for 260 mtons of barley, Any 2RS or 2RW, crop 2003, bulk, delivery 1/10/2003 - 31/1/2004, at USD 180.00 /mton, C&F by sea Karachi. (to see and make a bid to the barley request, please click here to view code BR2105P1456)
  
  

 Top Industry News 

• Baltic Beverages Holding AB (BBH), owned by Carlsberg Breweries and Scottish & Newcastle, is continuing its strong expansion in Kazakhstan Click here
  
  
• SUN Interbrew, a subsidiary of Belgian brewing force Interbrew, which controls eight breweries in Russia and three in Ukraine, has registered a net loss of EUR 8.8 million ... Click here
  
  
• Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries Plc, the British largest regional brewer, has posted a slight fall in half-year profit ... Click here
  
  
• The world's major malt importers Click here
  
  
• Leading Australian agribusiness AusBulk today announced a solid after-tax profit of $19.5 million for the half year to March 31, 2003 Click here
  
  
• Australia: In April barley planting started in very few places, the mass went in the ground in May, even June seedings are still possible ... Click here
  
  
• ne of the important reasons for the collapse of prices for malting barley this year is that the volume of malting barley traded in open markets is much lower than ... Click here
  
  

More news is available on site www.e-malt.com  

• Heineken N.V. announced on May 27 that it has decided to delist its shares from the Luxembourg Stock Exchange and Euronext Brussels due to the limited trading in the share ...more info



• The Chinese brewer, Harbin Brewery Co., has dismissed speculation that it is to be acquired by the leading Chinese brewing group, Tsingtao ...more info



• The Russian beer maker Baltika Brewery, a holding of Carlsberg and Scottish & Newcastle, has posted its first quarter results ...more info



• Russia: SUN Interbrew reports 1Q03 US GAAP financials on Friday 23 May, followed by Baltika next Monday. The results are likely to show diverging top-line trends ...more info



• Workers at Iraq's oldest brewery, Farida, sought US military protection Friday after a May 14 attack, which left four of them wounded ...more info



• Scottish & Newcastle needs to become more cost-effective and increase operating margins, a new report from the Canadean research institute concludes ...more info



• Austrian beer and beverage maker BBAG, due to be taken over by Heineken, posted a sharp decline in first-quarter operating profit ...more info



• “Vitanta-Intravest” SA, owned by Efes Breweries International B.V., based in the Republic of Moldova, is to invest this year USD 2 million in production development ...more info




2. Brewery News

Baltic Beverages Holding AB (BBH), owned by Carlsberg Breweries and Scottish & Newcastle, is continuing its strong expansion in Kazakhstan by acquiring its second brewery in the country. BBH has signed an agreement to purchase the total share capital of the brewery Ak-Nar in Almaty, Kazakstan at a prize of approx. DKK 190 million (USD 30 million). The sellers are the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and a private investor. The acquisition is subject to approval by authorities. The Ak-Nar brewery is newly built and has a capacity of 0.6 million hl beer, and the capacity can be expanded at low costs. In November last year, BBH acquired 76 % of the Irbis brewery also situated in Almaty. The plan was to increase the brewing capacity of Irbis by investing DKK 335 million in building a new brewery, however, a merger between Ak-Nar and Irbis makes this investment unnecessary...more info

SUN Interbrew, a subsidiary of Belgian brewing force Interbrew, which controls eight breweries in Russia and three in Ukraine, has registered a net loss of EUR 8.8 million in the first quarter of 2003. The registered loss is 13% higher than the loss registered in the same period 2002. In January-March 2003 SUN Interbrew recorded a net loss of EUR 7.8 million. The revenue from sales for the first quarter of the current year reached a value of EUR 82.9 million against EUR 84.1 million for the same period last year. The company has registered a gross profit of EUR 28.8 million for the first quarter against EUR 34.7 million and EBITDA – EUR 7 million versus EUR 8 million in the first quarter 2002...more info

Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries Plc, the British largest regional brewer, has posted a slight fall in half-year profit on May 23, but the results were at the top end of forecasts and the company was upbeat over its outlook, according to Reuters. W&D, which narrowly defeated a hostile bid from Pubmaster in 2001, reported a four percent fall in pre-tax profit of 30.1 million pounds ($49 million) for the 26 weeks to March 29, largely due to a higher interest charge after buying back shares promised in its defence, but above forecasts of between 28.7 million and 29.5 million. Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries Plc, the brewer of Banks's and Pedigree beers and owner of just over 1,600 pubs said it remained flexible over whether to return more cash to shareholders or make small pub acquisitions, though it declined to comment on its interest in struggling south-west England pub firm Eldridge Pope...more info

3. Malt News

The world's major malt importers



in thousand tons	Japan	Brazil	Russia	Venezuela	Philippines
Five-yr ave	850	875	550	375	215
2002-2003	750	900	825	400	200



Peter Watts.
Market Analyst, Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States, CWB, Winnipeg, Canada.

Source: Conference GrainWorld 2003 presentations.

Leading Australian agribusiness AusBulk today announced a solid after-tax profit of $19.5 million for the half year to March 31, 2003, despite the impact of the most serious drought in two decades. AusBulk chairman Kevin O’Driscoll said the result, which was based on revenue of $316 million, reflected the rigorous cost controls implemented by the company in the past six months. Mr O'Driscoll said the company's profit result was an outstanding achievement given that deliveries to the company's grain handling division had fallen from 8.6 million tonnes during the 2001/2002 harvest to just over 3 million tonnes in 2002/2003. AusBulk managing director Mr John Murray said relative to the results already released by a number of other grain industry companies, AusBulk had been able to perform well in what had been an extremely testing harvest. “It is significant that one third of the profit result was generated from the company’s malting and grain marketing divisions. This is a testament to our business strategy of diversifying the business base, which reduces the core storage and handling business’ exposure to seasonal factors,” Mr Murray said...more info

4. Barley News

Australia: In April barley planting started in very few places, the mass went in the ground in May, even June seedings are still possible. ABARE forecasts of crop of 6.635 million tons, somewhere in the middle between the record crop of 8.4 million tons in 2001/02 and the disastrous figure of 3.3 million tons last year. Rainfalls, which seemed to break the drought six weeks ago, had little follow-up since. Only coastal areas in East and West received more precipitation, while most of the inland stayed dry. It is too early to cheer or to write off the next crop, only one thing is for sure: after the long drought much more moisture is needed.n last year, but further good precipitation will be useful during the growing season.

One of the important reasons for the collapse of prices for malting barley this year is that the volume of malting barley traded in open markets is much lower than the quantity, which is needed by the industry. As is well-known, monopolies by boards still exist in Canada and large parts of Australia. In Europe there are many partner- and ownerships between malting industries and farmer-shareholders, cooperatives and merchants. It is estimated that 50 % of the German malting barley deliveries are traded as pre-contracts long before harvest. In France upto 70 % of the deliveries by farmers are handled as frame contracts with regular price fixations throughout the grain year.