1. Trading offer & request

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

• Offer for 1-5000 mtons of malt, 2RS Prisma, crop 2003, bulk, delivery 1/1/2004 - 31/3/2004, at EUR 271.00/mton, FOB Antwerp. (to see and make a bid to the malt offer, please click here to view code MF0909P1612)
  
  

 Top Industry News 

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

• South African Breweries Ltd (SAB), the South Africa based subsidiary of the world's second largest brewer SABMiller, announced that Miller Genuine Draft and Pilsner Urquell are now anticipated ...more info



• The investment bank, ING, has cut its rating on the shares of Belgian brewing force, Interbrew, to "sell" from "hold". The move followed the publication of the group's first-half results ...more info



• Scottish Courage, the UK’s leading brewer, announced on September 10 that it is in advanced negotiations with members of the Theakston family to return the company ...more info



• The Belgian brewing combine, Interbrew, has said that it believes French competition authorities will order its competitors, Heineken and Scottish & Newcastle (S&N), to sell some of its distribution ...more info



• The investment bank, Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB), has begun coverage of the second largest Danish brewer, Bryggerigruppen, rating it as "outperform" ...more info



• The Canadian specialist brewer, Brick Brewing Co. says its second-quarter profit rose slightly to $554,000 in difficult conditions while the craft brewer's sales edged up to $7.3 million ...more info



• SUN Interbrew Ltd plans to consolidate in 2004 all its production capacities and its sales company in Russia into OAO “United plants SUN Interbrew” ...more info



• A two-alarm fire broke out at the Coors Brewery in Golden in afternoon on September 10, 7NEWS reported. The blaze in a spent malt dryer was quickly extinguished ...more info



• Ukrainian brewing industry needs about 400 thousand tonnes of malting barley per year. Farmers harvested about 6.8 million tonnes of barley in 2003, that is 34.6% or with 3.588 million tonnes less ...more info



• The brewers of Ukraine produced about 12.35 million hl of beer in January-August this year. That is 12.5% more that in the same period last year ...more info



• Dutch brewing force, Heineken, reported on September 10 one per cent increase in its net profit excluding exceptional items and amortisation of goodwill up to EUR 334 million for the first half ...more info

2. Brewery News

Carlton and United Breweries (CUB), the Australian beer and spirits division of Foster's Group (Foster’s), announced on September 11 that it has signed a conditional agreement to sell the Kent Brewery siteJ in New South Wales (NSW) for $203 million to Australand Holdings Limited. The sale of the Kent Brewery site forms part of the CUB operational review announced in April 2003. This review is expected to deliver gross annual efficiency gains of $60 - $85 million within the next five years. The closure of Kent Brewery and associated capacity upgrades at Matilda Bay Brewery in Western Australia and at CUB’s most efficient brewery, Yatala in Queensland, are designed to spread production over more efficient breweries. The Kent Brewery site will be sold in three development parcels, with an option for CUB to lease back the administration building, the Australian Hotel and the County Claire Hotel. CUB will retain the licensing and gaming rights to the hotels. The agreement is conditional on Australand achieving a new Local Environmental Plan for the site. When the agreement becomes unconditional, CUB will receive the sale proceeds in five instalments through to 2010. CUB Managing Director, Trevor O’Hoy, said: “This is a good result for CUB and for the people of Sydney, who will benefit from the creation of a new residential and commercial community. “From CUB’s perspective, we get the best of both worlds. The opportunity to continue to house our NSW head office at this convenient and visible location and the benefit of the sale proceeds,” he said.

Belgian brewer Interbrew signed a €326.9 million strategic partnership agreement with Serbian largest brewer Apatinska Pivara on September 11, the Serbian press reported. Meanwhile, on September 11 Interbrew announced that the Extraordinary Shareholders Meeting of Apatin has approved Interbrew's offer and elected Interbrew as strategic partner for Apatin, the number one brewer in Serbia. This strategic partnership will further strengthen Interbrew's overall leading position in the Central European beer market, Interbrew said. Under the agreement, stipulating recapitalisation of Apatinska Pivara through a €64.9 million share issue, Interbrew will be obliged to set aside €262 million to purchase the existing shares. The buyer will be required to issue a public offering and purchase the shares at €167.6 per share. Interbrew also pledged to not cut jobs over a five-year period, invest €66 million in the company over the next seven years and a further €34 million in marketing. Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic said that both companies will benefit from the agreement, adding that strategic partnership deals with international companies are the best solution for reviving the Serbian economy. Brussels-based Interbrew is one of the oldest beer companies in the world. The company has operations in 21 countries world-wide, employing some 35,000 workers. In 2002, Interbrew posted a net turnover of EUR 6.9 billion...more info

Sun Interbrew, the Russia-Ukraine unit of Belgium's Interbrew and India's Sun group, said on September 10 it wants to buy two more plants in Russia as it tries to expand its market share, according to Reuters. "I would like to buy two breweries in the east," chief executive Joe Strella told reporters after presenting Sun Interbrew's forthcoming 2.5 billion rouble ($81.62 million) bond issue. "We have a concrete target." Strella has said he would like to buy breweries both to increase market share and provide staging posts for beer distribution, but did not specify which he was eyeing. The company already has nine plants in Russia, but its presence in the east is weak. Sun Interbrew, late to catch on to the demand for cheap plastic bottled beer in Russia, went on a drive to improve market share late last year. It has raised its market share to 14.4 % from 11.7 % last year. Interbrew's CEO John Brock said after the Belgian company's results were announced on Tuesday: "We recovered what we lost (in Russia). July and August were even better than the first half of the year..."I'd be very surprised if we don't gain additional market share between now and the end of the year."...more info

Japan beer shipments fell 10 % in August 2003 versus August 2002. Beer sales by Japan's five major brewers (Kirin Brewery, Asahi Breweries, Sapporo Breweries, Suntory and Orion Beer) fell 9.9 % in August from a year earlier to the lowest levels in a decade due to the unseasonably cool and wet summer, the firms said on September 10. The five companies' sales of beer and low-malt 'happoshu' brew totalled 592.46 million litres. "Beer shipments were at the lowest level since 1993 ... due to slack personal spending, a delayed recovery in demand after a tax hike on happoshu in May and the effect of low temperatures and wet weather," the companies said in a statement.

3. Malt News

The Czech government made available export subsidies for 110 thousand tonnes of malt at a maximum refund of CZK 1,000 (EUR 31) per ton for the crop year of 2003/04. It looks like a strange decision, as the Czech Republic will join the subsidyless EU on the 1st of May, 2004. Obviously export refunds cannot be applied on Czech exports to the present EU countries, as the "double profit agreements" do no permit subsidies. Slovak export refunds will expire at the end of 2003.

4. Barley News

Australia, Canada and the U.S. have assumed the role of main suppliers to Saudi-Arabia, the largest buyer of feed barley in the world. Price levels of US $ 140/ 143 FOB are attractive for the other suppliers as long as the EU, Russia and Ukraine are almost absent from world markets.

Malting barley harvest in European Union will reach the value of 9 million tonnes this year, under the Mautner’s estimations. United Kingdom is to be the EU largest malting barley producer with a harvest of 2.04 million tonnes, about 65.9% up versus the malting barley harvest in 2002. Here are the estimations for the malting barley production in the main EU member states:



in million tonnes	2002	2003	%
UK	1.23	2.04	65.9%
Germany	1.44	1.90	32.1%
France	1.73	1.90	9.9%
Denmark	1.55	1.45	-6.3%

Newsletter Links Improvement

Dear E-malt Reader!

In order to make our newsletter more useful & intuitive we have improved our news links system. Up to now, you were forced to input your username/password in order to get access to the news page when clicking the news link. Moreover, you didn’t get direct access to the news page through news link. Now, when you click the news link, e-malt.com system automatically finds out your rights. If you are already a registered user, you’d get access to the page containing news, as well as to the whole e-malt.com system. If you are not, you’d go to the Free E-malt Registration Form, and get all the access rights after your registration – i.e. get access to the page containing news, as well as to the whole e-malt.com system.
Thank You!