Anheuser-Busch InBev announced on July, 1 that it has established a Level 1 American Depository Receipt (ADR) program in the United States to facilitate greater North American investment in the company.

Each ADR represents one ordinary share of Anheuser-Busch InBev common stock and will begin trading over-the-counter under the ticker symbol “AHBIY” effective July 1, 2009. Anheuser-Busch InBev ordinary shares will continue to trade on Euronext Brussels under the symbol “ABI.”

“We are seeing significant interest in our stock in the U.S. and establishing this ADR program will facilitate ownership for a broader range of investors,” said Felipe Dutra, Chief Financial Officer of the Leuven, Belgium-based brewing giant.

The Bank of New York Mellon has been appointed as the depositary bank to administer the ADR program.

Carlsberg Deutschland announced on June, 29 the sale of the brewery in Braunschweig to Oettinger Brauerei GmbH effective as of 1 August 2009.

Oettinger acquires the brewery with all production employees (approximately 150), all related assets as well as a number of discount and private label brands, Carlsberg said.

The sale is part of the continuous optimisation of Carlsberg’s European brewery network structure. The sale is also part of Carlsberg Deutschland’s strategy to increase focus on the more profitable core brand business.

Both parties have agreed not to disclose the sales price. The deal depends on approval from relevant authorities.

The Braunschweig brewery was founded in 1871. In 1976, it was taken over by Holsten Group which became part of the Carlsberg Group in 2004.

Budweiser Budvar, N.C.’s 2008 sales reached the total of 1,312,580 hectolitres of beer, which represents a 4.75% year-on-year production increase, the brewer reported on June, 24.

Such a result is much valued considering the fact that the production of Czech breweries fell by 0.5% in 2008, the company said.

Budweiser Budvar’s domestic sales came to 731,059 hectolitres of beer, which is 9.7% more than the year before. Budweiser Budvar therefore strengthened its share of the Czech market since last year’s beer consumption in the Czech Republic decreased by 1.3%. The brewery’s export was partially affected by the global economic recession, suffering a year-on-year decrease of 0.9%. Nonetheless, the export of 581,518 hectolitres made the second highest export in the brewery’s history.

“We see the year 2008 a successful one, as we managed to considerably increase the brewery’s sales, run the brewery with a profit and invest a substantial amount into further advancement of the brewery. Moreover, 2008 saw the Pardál brand successfully launched on the nationwide market,” Budweiser Budvar’s managing director Jiří Boček assesses the year 2008.

Additionally, the planned profit was met, amounting to CZK 213 million before the bank reserve of CZK 80 million was made. The brewery’s operation ...More Info

Baltika Breweries, Russia’s largest beer maker, plans to increase its beer sales abroad by 5 – 6% in 2009, RBC reported on June, 30.

The company expects its beer sales outside Russia to amount to 3.1-3.2 mln hl this year. Baltika’s sales abroad include sales of beer it exports from Russia as well as those of beer produced under licence at foreign plants.

Baltika Breweries started to export its production in 2000. Today, Baltika beer is shipped to more than 50 countries in North, Central and South America, Africa, Asia Pacific region, Middle East, European and CIS countries. In 2008, Baltika’s export sales grew by 12% to 2.2 mln hl, taking into account the licensed production, the brewer’s sales abroad increased by 17% to 3.0 mln hl.

According to Dmitry Kistev, Export Sales Director of Baltika Breweries, the company plans to maintain this year the export volume of 2008. As for beer produced under licence at foreign breweries, Mr. Kistev said the company expects to sell more than 0.8 mln hl by the end of 2009, of which the main volume will be sold in CIS, mostly in Ukraine. Over the last five years, Baltika has launched the licensed production of its beers ...More Info

SABMiller plc announced on July,1 that it proposes to enter into a broad-based black economic empowerment transaction in South Africa, which will involve an equity issue of approximately 10% of its South African subsidiary, The South African Breweries Limited ("SAB"), to a broad base of black participants (the "Transaction"), reflecting the group's long-standing commitment to socio-economic progress in South African society.

The Transaction will involve an equity interest of approximately 10% in SAB, valued at approximately US$750 million (R6 billion), SABMiller said.

The London-based brewer said its black staff and black-owned retailers of SAB's alcoholic and soft drinks would be issued with new shares, funded through dividends over 10 years.

Companies in South Africa have to meet quotas on black ownership, employment and procurement as part of a government drive to shift more of the mostly white-controlled economy into the hands of the black majority.

The black investors will inject a small amount of cash and the rest will be funded via dividends over 10 years. External bank funding will not be required.

The transaction will cost SABMiller about $220 million, most of which will be taken as a non-cash cost in its 2011 financial year, and will be excluded from adjusted earnings.

At the ...More Info

Czech brewery Pivovary Staropramen saw its profit decrease by around a half to Kc289.6m last year from 2007's Kc578.4m, while sales rose on the year to Kc4.05bn from Kc3.84bn a year ago, the company said in its 2008 annual report on June, 30.

"The 2007 economic result was affected by a one-off property sale," chief executive Zbynek Kovar explained last year's drop in profit and the rise in sales.

Beer sales excluding foreign licence production rose by 0.7 percent to 3.26 million hectolitres last year, the company had said earlier.

Exports of Staropramen beer increased by 3 percent and the brand was exported to 32 countries last year, namely to the UK, Germany, Sweden and Slovakia. Licence beer production abroad rose by nearly a fifth on the year.

Pivovary Staropramen is the second largest Czech brewery. It covers roughly 15 percent of the domestic market. The company is a unit of the group Anheuser-Busch InBev, the largest beer producer in the world based in Leuven, Belgium.

Besides its Staropramen beer, the firm also sells beer brands such as Ostravar, Branik, Stella Artois and Hoegaarden in the Czech Republic.

Last year, Czech breweries produced 19.81 million hectolitres of beer, a drop of 0.5 percent compared to record ...More Info

Lion Nathan Limited said on June, 29 that Japan’s Kirin Holdings Company, Limited has received approval from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for the proposed Lion Nathan takeover.

Kirin agreed in May to buy the 53 percent of Lion it did not already own. Under Australian government regulations, takeovers of local companies by overseas ones need to be approved by the government.

Lion Nathan is expected to lodge the Scheme Booklet in July/August 2009, and the Scheme meeting is scheduled for September/October 2009.

Barley crops look good in France, Germany and the U.K., but most industry observers doubt that the record yields of last year will be repeated, a study showed last month.

Germany planted 20% less spring barley, the U.K. 18% more, because farmers could not get into the fields last autumn to plant winter grains. Rainfalls in May have improved the situation in Scandinavia and the whole Baltic Sea region.

Poor crops, especially of spring barley, are expected over the whole southeast, from southern Poland, Moravia and Austria through to Romania and Greece. The Iberian Peninsula had been considered in good shape after sufficient rainfalls in winter. The reports of a poor outlook in the center of Spain came as a shock, private estimates of the total barley crop are as low as 7 mln tons, which other analysts have not followed yet. Altogether it looks that all circumstances surrounding this year’s barley crop have been much less favourable than last year.

The EU had a long and cold winter, late planting in most countries except for France and South England, a dry period following seeding in many countries. It seems logical that yields cannot come close to those of 2008. An interesting point ...More Info

Canada and the US had an extremely bad start of the growing season, snow and frost until end May, drought in the Western Prairies, flooding in and around the Red River valley of Manitoba and North Dakota, industry analysts communicated last month.

Planting has been late almost everywhere; in North Dakota, only 79% of the planned acres had been sown by May 31. There has even been talk of abandoning part of the acreage for this year. Recent crop forecasts are 10.7 mln tons for Canada, 1.1 mln tons less than last year, and 4.8 mln tons (5.2) for the USA.

Good precipitation in most parts of Australia facilitated barley planting.

In Argentina, it remains too dry for planting. The export tax system of the country favours barley so that a further increase of the acreage is expected.

In China, the barley harvest has started in the Yangste River region, no results are known yet. The nation imported 612,000 tons of malting barley in Jan/April, 15% more than last year. The origins were: 257,000 tons from Canada, 233,000 tons from Australia, 132,000 tons from France.

EU’s barley exports in the current crop year were disappointing, licence bookings stand at 3.33 mln tons versus 3.68 mln a year ago, industry observers reported early in June.

EU barley traders find the competition from the Black Sea too strong, analysts comment.

The intervention activities showed indirectly the market price differences between consumption and export points on one side and Baltic Sea and inland regions on the other. The larger intervention purchases took place in: 180,000 tons Finland, 165,000 tons in Hungary, 160,000 tons in the Czech Republic, 120,000 tons in Germany (southeast of the country), 80,000 tons in Lithuania, 78,000 tons in Poland, 68,000 tons in Sweden.

Totally 889,000 tons were offered to intervention, 463,000 tons were accepted so far. When barley intervention will be abolished as from the crop year 2010/11, markets in the north and east of Europe will have to be lower than French/U.K./German market levels by the difference of transport cost to consumption or export points, experts said. This in turn may lead to a lower barley production in the eastern part of the EU, it is prognosticated.

Mandeep Kaur, Evan Evans, Doug Stewart, Megan Sheehy, Alex Speers, Joseph Lake, and John Bowman

Abstract:
Paper presented at the ASBC Convention, Tucson, June 2009. Premature yeast flocculation (PYF) is an intermittent brewing fermentation problem that results in incomplete wort fermentation, and is a significant problem for some breweries. When PYF occurs it can cause significant losses in out of specification beer (incompletely fermented beer) to the brewer. The occurrence of PYF appears to be related to certain malt batches, however detection of these problem batches by way of a fermentation test is problematic and time consuming. Previous research investigations have been directed at identifying the causal wort PYF active components of PYF. These approaches have not been particularly successful over the past 40+ years. Consequently we have approached the problem from a different perspective. That was to use molecular finger printing of malt microbes as a step to identify the microbial taxa that cause PYF by comparing PYF +ve/-ve malts using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (TRFLP). TRFLP is a rapid, sensitive, sequence–based technique for microbial diversity assessment based on the conserved small subunit rRNA genes allowing comparison of the composition of microbial populations. We have made a significant breakthrough with the TRFLP approach and concept. Very striking differences in the microbial DNA finger-print patterns, particularly for the fungal PCR primers, between PYF +ve/-ve malts are obvious by using the TRFLP technique. Various microbial taxa, particularly some fungal members, are strongly associated with the PYF +ve malt determinations made with conventional fermentation tests. We are currently screening further confirmed PYF +ve/–ve batches of malt to validate our discovery. Load full article, 18 pages, 807 Kb, PDF file