World: Malting barley prices move up again this week

World malting barley prices made another dramatic move higher this week, Europe in particular as the market rally shows no sign of slowing down, RMI Analytics said in their October report.

Even though production is relatively high from a historical perspective, yet prices are stretching toward record highs. Strong economic growth in relation to the pandemic recovery is fuelling the dramatic rebound. For beer, there is the added feature of the pandemic lockdowns reducing social interaction which is now returning in many regions.

In the RMI analysts’ view, brewers are faced with the positive challenge, the need to buy incrementally more ingredients to meet the consumer demand, but at much higher prices.

From a regional perspective, France is the clear leader in barley prices growth with Canada out of the game while Argentina tries to keep up pace. To-date it remains a little surprising that Australia is lagging behind other origins in terms of pace of price increases.