Europe: The barley harvest is now on the verge of being completed in Europe. In the Northern part of EU (Scotland, Northern Denmark, Northern Sweden, Finland), the cuttings have been hampered by lots of rain and are still between 25 and 50% below completion. The analysts figure out that the total EU (25) surplus is about 1.1 million tonnes, equivalent to 37 working days of the malting industry, notwithstanding the needs of carry-over and the shortage of remaining stocks of crop 2003.

Despite of this stress, the barley prices have reached historically low prices, 5 to 10 Euros per ton below any other previous historical bottom level: this is due to the intensive competition on the malt markets and the consistent weakness of the USD vs. Euro, which badly jeopardizes the EU exports of malt and barley towards the USD zone.

02 September, 2004