On April 12, the original beer specially created for Beijing's mass market by China Resources Snow Breweries Co., Ltd, formally entered Beijing, according to SinoCast China Business Daily News. China Resources Snow Breweries Co., Ltd is co-sponsored by China Resources Enterprise Limited and SAB Miller and is one of China's biggest beer enterprises.

Hou Xiaojian, the market director of China Resources Snow Breweries Co., Ltd said that the price of the original beer is CNY 1.5 for community and CNY 2- CNY 3 for catering market.

This action shows that it is the first time for China's three beer tycoons China Resources Snow Breweries Co., Ltd Tsingtao Brewery Company Limited and Yanjing Beer Group Corp compete for the same target group in the same region.

The Investment in a project to set up a new line to produce beer in PET-bottles at Volga Brewery based in Nizhny Novgorod, amounted to 4.5 million euros, the company announced on April 12 , according to Interfax .

The new line was launched in April 2006 and is currently working at full capacity, the Volga press service told Interfax. The line replaced older equipment that could not handle the required volumes of production.

The new line has production capacity of 18,000 bottles per hour. The equipment was delivered by Germany's Krones. The line's projected production capacity is four times greater than the capabilities of the first line for PET-bottles at the brewery, which was installed in 2002. Volga Brewery has production capacity of 0.8 million hectoliters per year. Heineken NV signed a deal on the purchase of the plant on August 10, 2004.

Bulgarian beer makers Kamenitza and Zagorka nearly dead-heated for the top spot in the March sales rankings with Kamenitza taking a marginal lead on its main local rival, shows data of Union of Brewers in Bulgaria (UBB), according to Bulgarian Dnevnik .

Kamenitza, owned by the world's biggest brewer by volume InBev, sold 112,327 hectoliters in March versus 112,155 hectoliters for Zagorka which is owned by Dutch Heineken and Greek Coca-Cola HBC.

Zagorka took the January sales crown before settling for second behind Kamenitza in February.
The bid due is well clear of the no.3 player Carlsberg Bulgarian which moved 65,636 hectoliters in March.

Locally-owned Boliarka VT placed fourth with 28,227 hectoliters.The UBB members recorded combined sales of 324,471 hectoliters in March.Q1 sale were reported at 672,028 hectoliters, up 18% year-on-year.

The malt calculation in the EU leaves little room for savings or speculation. The price of energy has gone up by 30 % on average since a year ago. Freight cost has increased, mainly for road transport.

Forecasts for spring barley acreages are down in the major malting barley regions, by 5 % or less in the Czech Republic, Denmark and the U.K., but around 10 % in France, Germany and Sweden. It can be said, of course, that barley needs for malting will be down by the same amounts.

Planting is late everywhere, but March snowfall and rains provided for good moisture reserves. A number of reasons can be cited for the lower malting barley acreage, one important reason is the disenchantment of farmers with their revenues from malting barley crops.

Low barley prices are an obvious consequence of the pressure on malt markets. If this situation continued, it could one day lead to a real supply crisis, the more so as there are new alternative outlets for grain crops.

The largest Russian malting company, ОАО "Russky Solod", being under control of Avangard Bank (Russia), has started the shipments of malt to Eastern Europe. The first lot was delivered to Romania.

Contracts are signed with the other beer producers from CIS countries (Commonwealth of Independent States). This year Russky Solod plans to deliver 45,000 tonnes of malt to Ukraine, about 10,000 tonnes to Kazakhstan and other 10,000 tonnes to the other CIS countries.

“Russky Solod" is the biggest malt producer in Russia and one of the largest in Europe. The company owns three malting plants in Moscow, Orlovsk and Voronej regions. The total production comes to more than 300,000 tonnes of malt per year.

Spring has arrived to the EU in late March. Spain and Portugal recorded good rainfalls, improving their crop prospects after the catastrophic harvest of 2005. However, further regular precipitation will be needed between now and harvest time to overcome to subsoil moisture deficit, the consequence of a number of past dry years.

Reliable forecasts of acreages are more difficult than in other years, because of the lateness of spring and still unknown winter damages, which, however, are expected to be small.

Coceral like other private estimates expect a larger crop in Spain and no major changes in the other countries. There is some apprehension, nevertheless, about the acreages and resulting crops of spring barley in Germany and all Eastern and Southeastern EU countries.

Neither USDA nor IGC office gives a crop forecast for 2006. Europe and the CIS are growing two thirds of the world barley production. The long and cold winter in large parts of Europe make a good estimate difficult, if not impossible.