E-Malt.com News article: WEYERMANN’S 2003 BARLEY PURCHASES ON TRACK

Bamberg, Germany. April 20, 2003. The Weyermann Malting Company announced that it has already signed contracts for more than half of its anticipated requirements for raw summer barley from the 2003 harvest. Weyermann, located in Bamberg in northern Bavaria, is one of the major European exporters of brewing malt to North American craft and specialty breweries. It converts well over 80,000 metric tons of raw grain annually into top-quality brewers grist.

This is good news for Weyermann’s more than 1,500 brewery customers in almost 70 countries. “Even our negotiations on outstanding contracts for the current growing season are well on track,” says Company President Sabine Weyermann. “We have a long-standing system of forward-contracting with some of the very best barley farmers in Bavaria and Thuringia. As a result, we never have to rely on the fickle spot market for our barley supplies—not even in years when there is a global shortfall in both quality and quantity.”

2002 was a disastrous year for barley worldwide. A combination of draught and excessive rain in many prime barley growing regions of the globe caused a world shortage in malted barley, which industry estimates put at well over a million metric tons. Particularly severely hit were Australia, Canada, and the United States. In the U.S., the 2002 barley harvest was the smallest since 1937. The unfavorable global weather conditions lead to erratic price spikes in most spot markets—often for barley with excessively high water and protein levels and very low germination rates. This put many malt makers in a tight position and forced many breweries the world over to scramble for their indispensable raw material.

Against this backdrop, Sabine Weyermann tries to put her Company’s brewery customers at ease. ”Our 2002 malt specifications have been virtually unchanged from our 2001 values in spite of the global shortfall,” she says, “and we have been and will continue to be able to deliver complete orders. Now, in 2003, all the fields are planted again, and we do not anticipate any problems. We will start processing the 2003 growing year in early fall, and there is no reason to worry about either the quantity or quality of Weyermann malt from this next harvest.”


23 April, 2003