Danish brewery group Royal Unibrew A/S announced it has agreed to acquire Polish brewery Browar Lomza Sp zoo from Przediebiorstwo Przemyslu Spozywczego Pepees SA, Nordic Business Report Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge reported February 15.

The acquisition price is PLN126m, in addition to which Royal Unibrew will assume debt of PLN16m.

Browar Lomza, based in Lomza in northeastern Poland, recorded sales of 630,000 hectolitres in 2006, achieving revenues of PLN91m.

Forge valuable relationships at The World's Only IP Communications Development Event. Communications Developer Conference is May 15-17, 2007 in Santa Clara.

The acquisition will significantly strengthen Royal Unibrew's position in Poland and will also enable considerable synergies within sales, production, distribution, administration and purchasing.

The transaction is conditional on approvals from the Polish competition authorities.

Royal Unibrew, headquartered in Faxe in Denmark, produces, distributes, markets and sells beer, malt and soft drinks in 65 markets worldwide. The group has some 2,200 employees and breweries in Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. Royal Unibrew is listed on the Nordic Exchange in Copenhagen.

Top Mexican brewer Modelo, the maker of the popular Corona beer, expects a 4 percent sales volume rise in Mexico and two-digit growth in export volume this year, according to Reuters February 15.

"We have many projects in the export market," the chairman and chief executive, Carlos Fernandez, told reporters. "They will certainly give us an important boost in exports."

Exports of Modelo's (GMODELOC.MX: Quote, Profile , Research) beer, mainly to the United States, are currently growing about three times as fast as national consumption.

Modelo is half-owned by U.S. brewer Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc., the maker of Budweiser beer.

The company announced in November plans to build a $520 million brewery in the northern state of Coahuila to meet U.S. booming demand.

The brewery will be built at Piedras Negras, across the border from the town of Eagle Pass in Texas. It will make Corona, Corona Light and Modelo Especial beers, largely for export to the United States.

The new brewery will be completed in early 2010.

It is not all excluded that new crop prices will increase on basis of the tight S/D balance of barley and malt, analysts commented on February 02. The first large brewery groups have decided to enter the new crop market now. We expect large business to develop in the coming weeks.

Any hope that the EU could import barley from Eastern Europe or from South America, has almost completely disappeared. Russia had harvested large quantities of barley with shaky germination, which proves to be a real problem by now. The Ukraine has stopped possible exports since October by its new (no-)licence system.

The South American barley crop, which started quite well in Uruguay and Northern Argentina, produced lower yields and high screenings in the important southern part of the province of Buenos Aires. The remaining export surplus will remain inside South America in all probability.

EU malting barley markets, which had been inactive since early December and seemed to become slightly weaker, came back to life at the very end of January. New domestic business, reported business and further interest from Russia and rumoured sales to China drove prices back to levels of early December.

There is a risk that malting barley supplies of crop 2006 will dry up altogether, at least the stocks of good two-row spring barley. Maltsters will have to rely more on winter barley and low-quality barley, or they will have to stop production for a certain period. Production stops are indeed reported from Germany.

Malt barley is in short supply across Australia but maltsters are expected to keep production going until the next crops come in, The Weekly Times (Australia) reported February 14.

ABB Grain Victorian logistics manager Peter Sidley said in a good year, Australian maltsters normally consumed about 880,000 tonnes of malt barley and 2.4 million tonnes of raw malt barley was sent for export.

Australia's total production last harvest was only 800,000 tonnes.

This means Victorian maltsters will not be able to source their normal 260,000 tonnes of supply from last year's harvest, Mr Sidley told a barley information night at Warracknabeal recently.

''This year, there will be limited choice of sourcing barley and they (maltsters) will be using old stocks as long as they can,'' Mr Sidley said.

He said it was not known exactly how much carryover remained from Victoria's 2005 bumper malt barley harvest.

Another unknown is just how grain up to 22 months old will perform in a malthouse.

One solution to the supply shortage will be imports of malt barley from Western Australia, which had a better year than the eastern states.

Mr Sidley said it was not desirable to import malt barley from overseas and was unlikely this season.