Heineken part-owned Chinese Kingway Brewery is reported to start building a new brewery in Chengdu, in the south-western province of Sichuan. Plans concerning the new brewery were released earlier in February this year. Accordingly, the brewery’s designed capacity is estimated to 200,000 t, local media released July 07.

About US&50 million are to be invested in brewery construction. Ye Xuguan, Kingway Brewery CEO, said the plant is able to lift capacity by another 200,000 t, depending on the demand.

Heineken NV said it has recently cut 500 jobs in Russia and is aiming to raise its market share in the Russian beer market to 20 pct in 5 to 6 years, AFX released July 05.

Last year Heineken said that with the acquisitions of the Russian Patra, Stepan Razin, Baikal and Ivan Taranov breweries, its market share in Russia would expand to 14 pct.

The 500 job cuts are a result of the 'integration activities and improvement of efficiency' at the Russian breweries.

Heineken also said it expects to sell more than 13 mln hectolitres of beer in Russia, 1 mln more than in 2005.

The company reiterated its expectation that the Russian operations bought last year will become 'value enhancing in 5 years time'.

Most of the large international brewing groups, InBev, Heineken, Carlsberg, SABMiller, also African, Brazilian, Venezuelan, Japanese brewers have entered the malt market asking for offers for 2007, analysts reported.

However, hardly anyone bought so far. Malt average prices are € 270.00/€ 280.00 delivered breweries, € 260.00/€ 270.00 FOB seaport in bulk, and € 280.00/€ 290.00 FOB seaport in bulk in container.

Brewers, who had been able to depress malting margins down to levels below € 40.00 per t at the height of the maltsters' crisis, are now faced with price increases averaging € 30.00/€ 40.00 per t, which often is far above their budget numbers. Of course, they are trying to limit the damage, but also realize that maltsters have clear financial limitations.

Another year as 2005/06, and we would have seen a wave of maltsters' failures. The cost of energy and transport has increased substantially during the past 12 months, both factors together put about € 10.00 per t extra on the maltster's calculation. Especially river transport of barley and malt has been affected by the climate change. Low water levels occur more frequently than in former years and lead to freight surcharges and less available freight space.

Hungarian courts completed bankruptcy procedures of Albadomu Malata Bt. the week ended July 02, reports said.

The assets of the bankrupt company were sold to the French/Belgian Boortmalt group. According to the Hungarian press, it concerns primarily buildings and machines. Legal proceedings will take a bit longer, as InBev, the former owner of the Bocs malthouse, had a title on the factory in case of the new owners' bankruptcy, and must agree with the court's decision.

Albadomu Malata Bt. located in Dunaujvaros is an affiliate company of the Friedrich Weissheimer Malzfabrik Group. The Friedrich Weissheimer Malzfabrik was established in the year of 1864, in Andernach.

Boortmalt produces about 500,000 t malt in Belgium, France, Croatia and China.

At the end of the grain year 2005/06 EU barley statistics look disappointing, analyst said. Exports were 2.87 million t vs. 3.47 million t in 2004/05. Intervention stocks increased by 800,000 tons to 2.3 million t in spite of export and domestic sales of 1.7 million t. Exports against “zero refund” licences amounted to 886,000 t. Experts estimate that less than half of that quantity was malting barley.