EU: The EU surplus of malting barley is 2 million tonnes, in theory, market analysts revealed. A September barley seminar of Euromalt agreed broadly on the major national estimates: a huge crop in France, a record small deficit in Germany, spoiled hopes in the U.K. and Scandinavia, where August rainfalls prevented the harvest of mature grains and led to typical damages viz. stained grains, splits, pregermination. Luckily one part of the spring barley was harvested before the rains, and another part was not yet ripe enough and escaped the worst of the weather damage. The U.K. is altogether self-sufficient in malting barley, Denmark’s usual export surplus is halved to about 500,000 tonnes.

13 October, 2004