EU: Estimations and forecast for malt capacities closings

Since last year older malt capacities of 340,000 tonnes have been or will be closed within short, 190,000 tonnes in the U.K., 90,000 tonnes in France and 62,000 tonnes in Germany.

Market analysts commented: �It is expected that more capacities will be shut this year. While there is still a total capacity of 8,5 Million tonnes, we assume that hardly more than 7,7 million tonnes of malt will be produced, max. 5,6 million tonnes for domestic needs and 2,1 million tonnes for export. There are some unsold stocks pressing on the market, and there will be overproduction in some factories, but altogether the industry can only produce as much malt as it can sell.

There will be two consequences, one is a smaller barley demand, the other is that malt supply will be in line with brewers� demand. Maltsters have very bad losses on their books for 2006, increased by the rising cost of energy and transport. Therefore they must try to bring sales prices in line with the cost of malt.

Recent nominal quotes of � 250,- Ex Works or � 270,-, delivered breweries for the year 2007, would point in that direction. Some buyers show interest in new crop malt, sellers are not keen to enter the market yet.�