EU: EU brewers enjoying the best summer since years

EU brewers enjoy the best summer since years, gastronomy, travel, summer festivals push beer sales back to pre-pandemic levels. The sore point is the cost of production, malt, packing, energy prices have shot up and require a rather steep increase of beer prices, H. M. Gauger GmbH said in their July report.

The large international brewing groups have covered all or most of their malt demand, fixed barley prices against long-term agreements and secured (?) their energy and bottle/can needs for 2022 and 2023. This is not the case for the whole brewing industry, and there appears to be a gap between unsold malt capacities and malt demand.

Irrespective of the further course of barley markets, malt will remain a very tight item until the expansion of existing or construction of new industries. Of course, the corona pandemic is not defeated and there is the risk of a serious economic recession, which could alter present malt and beer trends.

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