One of the important reasons for the collapse of prices for malting barley this year is that high prices had two effects. They brought much larger supplies out in the EU market than earlier forecast. Earlier estimates of an EU export surplus of 1.2-1.5 million tons will be surpassed by real exports of more than 2 million tons. Buyers of EU malting barley were penalized by the revaluation of the Euro, which was US $ 0,9913 on July 1, 2002, and is US $ 1,17 today. The second effect was that buyers struggled to find alternatives. More local barley in China, some feed barley, a larger usage of adjuncts contributed to lower needs of imported malting barley.

23 May, 2003