Kingway Brewery Holdings Ltd said its 400 mln yuan brewery in Foshan City, Guangdong province will start commercial production in early 2008, according to AFX News Limited, February 13.

The company, which first announced the project in November, said it has set up a new company named Kingway Brewery (Foshan) Co Ltd to build and operate the new plant.

The plant will have production capacity of 200,000 tons per annum.

Kingway said it has so far awarded contracts worth 137.4 mln yuan for the brewery's construction.

The latest developments in the restructuring phase of the European malt industry were the take-over of the West German Weissheimer plants by Avangard, Moscow, and the purchase of Sachsen-Malz, Heidenau, and Baltic Malt, Gdansk, by Malteurop, Reims. All these factories had produced malt (not 100 % of their capacities) under their former managements so that the amount of malt offered to the market will hardly increase.

In the past few months shipments of malting barley from France, Denmark and the UK to Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic had been very substantial, and even Slovakia and Hungary had received a good number of trains of French spring and winter barley, market analysts commented on February 2nd.

A Czech estimate puts the import deficit at 300.000 tons for the present crop year. Maltsters all over the EU will end the campaign with no barley stocks extremely early in the new crop year and will need at least a 13 months supply for the new campaign, i.e. 850.000 tons additional malting barley of crop 2007. It is still unclear, how much old and new crop barley Russia will buy, estimates are upto 200.000 tons.

China's domestic barley stocks seem exhausted by now, and what are Chinese maltsters and brewers going to do without new offers coming from Canada and Australia? It is safe to assume that there will be a good Chinese demand for French winter barley for shipment between August and October. Business is already reported, certainly for container shipment, while a rumour of a sold Panamax bulk cargo cannot be confirmed yet.

The EU exported 2.35 million tonnes to-date (intervention sales and booked licences), and has surpassed last year's figure in recent months, because it has taken over a major export program from the defaulting Ukraine. Carryover intervention stocks of barley were 2.35 million tonnes in July of last year and have been reduced to 500.000 tons by now.

Market prices of feed barley, basis July, delivered Rouen, are EUR 143,-/144,- versus the intervention price of EUR 101,31, market analysts posted on February 2nd.