United Breweries (UB), India's largest beer maker, has posted a strong 57 per cent increase in net profit to Rs 355 mln for the first quarter of current fiscal year, Business Standard communicated on July, 24.

Net sales at Rs 5,564.5 mln were up 17 per cent, powered by a 25 per cent growth in strong beer.

According to a statement from UBL, its market share grew by 3 per cent and overall national share excluding Andhra Pradesh stood at 51 per cent. In Andhra Pradesh, UBL along with SABMiller restrained from supplying the market as the matter on price increase is currently pending decision from the AP High Court as the AP government has not been allowing price increases.

Operating profits grew 30 per cent on the back of selective price increases and aggressive cost control. The company has plans to expand capacities in all key markets and the new green field in AP will be ready in time for the coming summer season.

The company said it is on track to increase its brewing capacity by 20 per cent to 7.15 mln hectolitres per annum in the next two years.

UBL is putting up a greenfield unit with 6 mln cases per ...More Info

Cia. de Bebidas das Americas (AmBev) dropped the most in more than three months after Brazil’s antitrust regulator fined Latin America’s biggest brewer 353 million reais ($184.7 million) for anticompetitive practices, Bloomberg reported on July, 22.

AmBev, as the Sao Paulo-based company is known, fell 3.3 percent to 129.50 reais in Sao Paulo trading, the biggest decline since April 8.

The agency known as Cade had been investigating whether AmBev limited competition by supplying retailers with refrigerators that they could only use to store AmBev products. A proposal made at the beginning of the week to settle the investigation was rejected, said Paulo Furquim, the agency’s acting president.

Cade imposed the fine after ruling that a reseller loyalty program adopted in 2002 unfairly restricted trade. The fine imposed upon the company is equivalent to 2% of its revenues in 2003, which was a year before the government investigation started.

"AmBev is waiting for the written decision by Cade in order to evaluate further action," the company said.

Under the loyalty program, which was called "To Contigo", bars and resellers gained points for beer units sold that could be redeemed in the form of beer refrigerators or discounts.

Cade's Fernando de Magalhaes Furlan said ...More Info

Hite Holdings slid after the company said in a filing to the Korea Exchange late on July, 22 it would issue 11.4 million new shares at 33,993 won ($27.21) each, Reuters communicated on July, 23.

It said the new shares would be exchanged for a stake in Hite Brewery Co Ltd, enabling the holdings firm to secure a 30 percent stake in its brewery arm.

“Under the law, a holdings company has to hold a minimum 30 percent stake in its subsidiary ... and the share swap is a procedural step to transform Hite into a holdings group,” said Lee So-yong, an analyst at KB Securities.

“Since the number of shares (in Hite Holdings) will almost double after the issue, it's natural to see a drop. The price looks reasonable to me, but the market may think the volume is too big,” Lee said.

Hite Holdings fell 6.27 percent to 32,900 won as of 0332 GMT, while Hite Brewery rose 1.49 percent.

Beer volumes fell 10 per cent in UK’s on-trade in May, Publican cited latest figures from Nielsen on July, 24.

Graham Page, consultant for Nielsen, said he believed the trend will lead to off-trade beer volumes surpassing on trade sales in 2010.

He said: “It’s difficult to be precise but with on trade volumes dropping around 10 per cent month on month if it continues at that rate the crossover will be sooner rather than later."

Beer sales in the on-trade currently account for 58 per cent of the market compared to 42 per cent volume in the off-trade.

Page added that with price becoming increasingly important to consumers brewers needed to concentrate on producing value beers.

He said: "Value is driving so much of consumer purchases currently and the industry still needs volume as having bigger margins is irrelevant if there's no volume to go with them.

"The industry has got to find a way to get customers to consume mid-strength beers which they can afford to buy.”

The AC Nielsen figures for May show ale volume down 11%, lager volumes down 10%, and stout down 6%.

Russkiy Solod, a leading Russian maltster, has filed a lawsuit against the nation’s largest brewer Baltika Breweries. “This time, the case concerns a malt delivery contract for the first half of 2009,” a company spokesman was quoted as saying by RBC on July, 24.

Russkiy Solod (Russian Malt) has registered the lawsuit in the category “About default on contract obligations” with Moscow’s Arbitrary Court. The maltster demands 2.119 bln roubles from Baltika Breweries in payment of the malt produced for the brewer.

Let us remind you that in December 2008 Russkiy Solod filed a lawsuit with the Moscow’s Arbitrary Court demanding almost 1.6 bln roubles from Baltika Breweries in payment of the malt produced for the brewer as well as a fine for breach of contract obligation for delivery of malt in 2008.

In May 2009, the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation (FAS) instituted legal proceedings against the maltster Russkiy Solod ex parte Baltika Breweries.

Russkiy Solod was accused of setting in 2008 a monopoly price on the malt it produced for Russia’s largest brewer.

Russkiy Solod owns three malthouses in Russia with a total annual capacity of 330 thousand tonnes of malt.

The prospects for sales of French barley 2008/09 to Spain and the north destination improved by the end of the campaign thus raising estimates for the nation’s barley sales within EU to 3.8 mln tons, La Depeche posted on July, 23.

The latest forecast of 3.8 mln tons of barley is 20,000 tons higher than last month’s estimate and 10% higher than France’s barley exports to other EU nations in 2007/08.

As for sales to third countries, the latest estimates were revised downwards by 50,000 tons to 1.2 mln tons amid weak exports in June.

France is expected to win back some share of the global barley trade in the future campaign due to potential barley crop of 12 mln tons and reduced barley production in Russia and Ukraine.

The CWB released on July, 23 its latest monthly Pool Return Outlooks (PRO) for the 2008-09 and the 2009-10 crop years.

PRO Commentary 2008-09 crop year

Designated barley Global malting barley prices were pressured again this month from large carry-out supplies and the advancing European harvest. Large stocks of malting-quality barley are being carried over from old crop to new crop, allowing buyers to be selective. Designated barley sales for the 2008-09 pool are now largely complete and the impact of future price changes will be minimal, the CWB said.

Malting barley values declined by C$3 from the May PRO to C$314 for two-row and C$294 for six-row malting barley.

Feed barley Global feed barley prices were lower this month. The USDA acreage intentions report indicated that U.S. corn planted acreage is 87 million acres, three million acres more than the market had anticipated. The large forecasted corn production has pressured feed grain prices lower this past month. Feed barley and feed wheat from the Black Sea remain the cheapest feed grains internationally, far below North American domestic prices. This has limited the amount of North American barley exports.

Feed barley Pool B remained unchanged at C$163 per tonne.

PRO Commentary 2009-10 crop year

Designated barley International malting barley prices were lower ...More Info

Harvesting works advance gradually across the EU but buyers are taking their time waiting for comprehensive information on new crop spring barley quality and quantity, La Depeche reported on July, 24.

Prices for malting barley are decreasing (EUR128/tonne, Sebastian Fob Creil crop 2008, or minus EUR3 since last week, according to La Depeche) under the expectation of an important crop of winter barley in France.

A division of the world’s largest hop supplier, Barth-Haas Group, has begun legal proceedings against an unnamed European brewer for allegedly breaching a forward supply contract, Brewers’ Guardian reported on July, 23.

In resorting to court action Joh Barth & Sohn (JBS) has fired a warning shot across the bows of brewers struggling under the recession. JBS managing partner Stephan Barth said his group “cannot tolerate unilateral breaches of contracts.”

The firm will not name the brewer in question, choosing only to say it is from a southeast European country that is not part of the EU. JBS sales director Thomas Raiser said the brewer began reneging on its commitments last summer.

JBS dismissed the suggestion its announcement of the action was merely posturing and confirmed a lawsuit has been filed. “The lawsuit has been filed. It’s a warning shot but not for the brewer in question,” a spokesman said.

Raiser said the time for warning JBS’s allegedly errant client had passed, adding: “All attempts to contact the brewery and to work out an amicable resolution of the conflict failed and were ignored by the counter-party.

“While we regret this development very much, in the end there was no alternative but to ...More Info

Graham G. Stewart

Abstract:
J. Inst. Brew. 115(1), 3–29, 2009 Horace Brown spent fifty years conducting brewing research in Burton-on-Trent, Dublin and London. His contributions were remarkable and his focus was to solve practical brewing problems by employing and developing fundamental scientific principles. He studied all aspects of the brewing process including raw materials, wort preparation, fermentation, yeast and beer stability. As a number of previous presenters of the Horace Brown Lecture have discussed Brown’s achievements in detail, the focus of this paper is a review of the brewing research that has been conducted by the author and his colleagues during the past forty years. Similar to Horace Brown, fundamental research has been employed to solve brewing problems. Research studies that are discussed in this review paper include reasons for premature flocculation of ale strains resulting in wort underattenuation including mechanisms of co-flocculation and pure strain flocculation, storage procedures for yeast cultures prior to propagation, studies on the genetic manipulation of brewer’s yeast strains with an emphasis on the FLO1 gene, spheroplast fusion and the respiratory deficient (petite) mutation, the uptake and metabolism of wort sugars and amino acids, the influence of wort density on fermentation characteristics and beer flavour and stability, and finally, the contribution that high gravity brewing has on brewing capacity, fermentation efficiency and beer quality and stability. Key words: Co-flocculation, flavour, flocculation, genetic manipulation, high gravity brewing, petite mutation, propagation, stability, wort clarity and composition, yeast management. Load full article, 27 pages, 45 508 MB , PDF file