Heineken, a leading global brewing company, plans to invest 117 million euros ($180 million) in Russia's Volga brewery in 2008-2009, the head of the Russian company said, according to RIA Novosti, March 20.

"During the coming two years, we plan to build new bottling shops, a brewing complex, water treatment facilities, warehouses and a boiler," Giya Meskhi, general director of the Volga brewery said.

According to Meskhi, the investment will allow Heineken to boost its production capacity from the current 2.2 million to 5.2 million hectoliters.

The Volga brewery joined Heineken group of companies in August 2004 and launched large-scale modernization in 2005.

Scottish & Newcastle Plc, the brewer being bought by Carlsberg A/S and Heineken NV, fell in London trading on concern Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. may withdraw financing for the takeover, Bloomberg reported March 17.

Scottish & Newcastle dropped 1.7 percent, pulling the stock down to the lowest price since the Edinburgh-based brewer agreed to be acquired on Jan. 25 for 7.8 billion pounds ($15.6 billion). Lehman, the fourth-largest U.S. securities firm, said today it has ample access to cash.

Lehman slid by more than a third in New York trading on concern about possible cash shortages at Wall Street firms. Customer withdrawals forced Bear Stearns Cos. to agree to be bought this weekend at a 90 percent discount to last week's closing price. Lehman is among banks that started seeking buyers last month for loans used by Carlsberg to fund the takeover.

``If Lehman fails, Carlsberg will have to look for another bank,'' said Gerard Rijk, an analyst at ING Wholesale Banking in Amsterdam. ``But it should not be dramatically difficult, as the Danish banks and other, bigger banks are probably very willing to do this healthy-margin deal.''

Carlsberg spokesman Jens Peter Skaarup said today by telephone that financing for the deal is still ...More Info

The takeover bid for beverage group Pivovarna Lasko, published on 12 February, closed on March 11th at noon. Financial firms Infond Holding and Fidina, construction company CPM and manufacturing company Koto, which already own nearly 42% of the brewery, offered EUR 88 per share, Slovene Press Agenyc reports, according to Portalino, March 20.

The bidders are after 5,087,574 shares that they do not already own, which are valued at EUR 448m. They have not set the threshold for the success of their bid. Stock marker analysts and experts find the offered sum rather low but expected, as the believe the aim of the takeover bid is merely to legalise the existing state.

Pivovarna Lasko said that the takeover would enable it to successfully realise existing interests and the development of the company's strategy. It also assured that it had not talked or made any agreements with the four companies.

The four bidders are widely believed to be affiliated with the Lasko management.

The UK-based Cobra Beer is expanding its India play with two fresh strategic bottling alliances, The Economic Times published March 20. Sources said that Cobra is entering into a bottling pact with Bangalore-headquartered Khoday India and Artos Brewery, located in Andhra Pradesh and jointly owned by Mohan Meakin family and associates.

This will bolster Cobra’s presence in the southern markets that account for around 50% of the overall domestic beer consumption.

In doing so, it is perhaps boosting prospects to keep date with an ambitious target of selling 15 million cases annually in India by 2012. The company has claimed volume sales of about 3 million cases (of 7.8 litre each) in FY08.

In recent months, NRI millionaire Karan Billimoria-led Cobra Beer has inked a slew of bottling tie-ups, quietly taking the cumulative available brewing capacity to about 6 million cases annually.

Cobra management, both, in the UK and in India have seen changes with Adrian McKeon from Beam Global taking over as global CEO, and Poonam Chandel, former Radico Khaitan and Shaw Wallace executive, becoming COO of domestic operations. Mr Chandel confirmed the impending tie-ups with Khoday and Artos, when contacted by ET.

She said the Indian arm, with the flagship Cobra and higher ...More Info

Czech malt houses produced more than 527,000 tonnes of malt in 2007, a growth of 1.2 percent year-on-year and the highest amount in history, representatives of the Czech Beer and Malt Association have told reporters, according to CTK, March 20.

Exports, which made up 40 percent of the total output, decreased on the year owing to low stocks.

Czech malt was exported to more than 20 countries, with Poland making up more than a half of Czech malt exports. Apart from European countries, Czech malt is also sold to Cuba and Vietnam, for instance.

There are 36 malt houses active in the Czech Republic. Czech malt houses associated in Sladovny Soufflet CR produce more than 61 percent of the total output. The second largest Czech malt producer is brewery Plzensky Prazdroj.

Czech beer production and exports also reached record levels last year. Total beer output grew by 0.5 percent to 19.9 million hectolitres, while exports rose by 1.6 percent to 3.6 million hectolitres.

The Czech Republic is the world's ninth largest beer exporter. Experts predict the country should become the seventh largest beer exporter in the world by 2012.

The largest Czech beer exporter is Plzensky Prazdroj, followed by Staropramen and Budejovicky Budvar. The biggest export ...More Info

The malting barley market has been blocked because of the crisis at the stock-exchange, la Depeche published March 20. The prices continue to decrease.

The feed barley market is in expectation of tender results of Syria and Jordan. The market is little animated and even abandoned by the operators. The prices go down.

According to Strategie Grains’ updated data, next year barley export in EU-27 is going to increase till 14.23 mln tonnes, which is 2 mln tonnes higher than in February forecast, the media reported March 21.

On the other hand, analysts maintain their barley production forecast for EU in 2008/09 at 128.5 mln tonnes (in 2007/08 it was of 111.5 mln tonnes).

In addition, in the March forecast, feed barley consumption was reduced for the next marketing year mainly due to high prices and the change in growers’ preferences from barley to corn.

Barley final stocks in EU are forecasted at the level of 24.3 mln tonnes, or 2 mln tonnes higher than in last forecast.

The government commission for protective measures in foreign trade and customs tariff policy approved the extension of export duties on barley until July 1, a source on the commission said, according to Interfax, March 21.

The export duty is now 30%, but not less than 70 euros per tonne for barley. The duties are currently in effect until April 30.

Russia has exported 13.2 million tonnes of grain since the start of the current agricultural year in July 2007, according to the Russian Grain Union.

D.E. Evans(1), M. Ratcliffe(2), B.L. Jones(3), A.R. Barr(1). (1) The University of Adelaide, Waite Campus, Dept. of Plant Science, Glen Osmond, SA 5064; (2) Victorian Institute for Dryland Agriculture, PO Box 260, Horsham, VIC 3401; (3) USD-ARS, Cereal Crops Unit, 501N Walnut St, Madison, WI 53705, USA.

Introduction
Beer foam quality is one of the critical characteristics that a consumer will use to determinethe quality of dispensed beer. Brewers are particularly interested in optimising foam quality because it will impact upon customers purchase decisions. Beer foam quality is a combination of its stability, quantity, lacing (adhesion or cling), whiteness, 'creaminess', density, viscosity and strength (Bamforth, 1985). Brewers current strategies for improving foam stability are to specify malt with relatively low Kolbach indices (KI, soluble/total protein) and supplement the beer produced with PGA (propylene glycol alginate), use foam generating "widgets" or use chemically hydrogenated hop extracts (i.e. “Tetra” hop). All these strategies are relatively costly and will impart visual or flavour effects on the beer that may not be desirable. Naturally occurring foam promotants in beer include proteins (>5kDa), isohumulone, metal cations, low levels of ethanol (<3%) and gums (presumably ß-glucans and arabinoxylans) while lipids and high levels of ethanol are foam inhibiting (Bamforth, 1985). Foam-positive proteins can be divided into two fractions based on molecular weight, 1. high molecular weight (HMW, 35-50 kDa); 2. low molecular weight (LMW, 5-17 kDa). Both fractions originate primarily from malt (Asano & Hashimoto, 1980), with the HMW fraction containing mainly protein Z (Kaersgaard, P. & Hejgaard, 1979), and the LMW fraction containing LTP1 (lipid transfer protein 1) and a mixture of hordein and glutelin fragments (Sorensen et al., 1993, Sheehan & Skerritt, 1997, Vaag et al., 1999). Protein Z may be further sub-divided into the protein Z4 and protein Z7 forms which are highly related and expressed from one or more genes on chromosomes 4H and 5H, respectively. In barley and malt, protein Z4 is the dominant isoform accounting for approximately 80 % of all protein Z. Evans et al., (1998, 1999) applied quantitative enzymelinked immunosorbent as says (ELISA) to measure the quantity of protein Z4, protein Z7 and LTP1 in malt. In small and pilot scale brewing trials, the level of protein Z4 was significantly and positively correlated to foam stability as measured by the Rudin head retention time test (Bishop et al., 1975). It follows that if foam quality could be predicted by measurement of foam-positive proteins in barley and malt it would be possible to deliver malt to both domestic and international brewers that produce beer with high quality foam heads. In this study, the quantity of protein Z4, protein Z7 and LTP1 were assessed in malt from a selection of Australian and international malting varieties. The genetic basis for the level of protein Z4 and Z7 were established by QTL analysis in two mapping populations.
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