E-Malt.com News article: 1754

Canada: The manager of barley procurement for Westcan Malting Ltd., Ian John, was seeing signs of high protein in a lot of the crop, which suggested malt barley supplies might again be tight this year, The Western Producer reported on October 30. His fears began to subside as the harvest moved westward into Alberta. Although barley yields and quality were variable for protein and plumpness, he managed to find enough malting barley in Alberta and western Saskatchewan to meet Westcan's needs. "As the harvest went on, there were a lot of those small pockets that had showers at the right time," said John, who is based at the Westcan plant in Alix, Alta. "As the barley buyer here, I'm pretty satisfied with the way things turned out for us."

A hot, dry summer pushed up protein levels in many Saskatchewan and Alberta barley crops while pushing down kernel plumpness. Despite those quality issues, the overall barley crop was an improvement over the previous two years, when severe drought hampered crops over large parts of the western Prairies.
Joan Anderson, the Canadian Wheat Board's marketing manager for barley, agreed there was a lot of variability this year in prairie malting barley quality. However, she said the supply of malting barley from this year's crop is far greater than last year, when approximately 900,000 tonnes of malting barley were selected in Western Canada, largely because of drought in important growing regions. As of last week, 1.98 million tonnes had been selected, Anderson said, with a target of 2.1 million tonnes.

The size of this year's crop will help restore confidence among foreign buyers that Canada is able to meet its malt barley needs. Of course, growing barley suited for malting is only one of the challenges for Western Canada. Another is finding buyers. Some of Anderson's greatest concerns are with export markets, where ample supplies are taking shape in countries such as the United States and Australia.

The U.S., an important buyer of Canadian malting barley, grew a large crop of good quality barley. As a result, demand from the U.S. has slowed.
Australia, a major competitor in the export market, also appears destined to produce a large crop. The harvest begins there next month and hits full swing in December.

Anderson said events in China are also worth watching. That country went through its own scare with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome earlier this year. Over a period of about three months, people were more reluctant to spend time in public for fear of exposure to the disease. That meant less spending in restaurants and on beer. "That led to a buildup of the malt stocks and malting barley that China had bought," Anderson said. "Until they chew through those stocks, they're not willing to buy new." China typically buys a lot of malting barley at this time of year. Anderson suspected it will be January before the country uses enough of its surplus to begin buying again.

A strong Canadian dollar and soaring ocean freight costs are among the other factors making it difficult to secure export markets for Canadian malting barley, she said.


03 November, 2003