EU: Pace of malting barley shipments starts to level off
After a reasonably strong start for malt exports from the EU-27, the pace of shipments has started to level off and this slowing trend is a concern. To illustrate, at week 8, crop24 shipments were 6% ahead of crop23, and only 3% behind crop22 levels. Over the past four weeks, the slowdown has left crop24 only 1% ahead of 2023, and dropping to 11% behind 2022, RMI Analytics said in their early October report.
As the malt supply chain continues to search for encouraging news about a volume rebound, these malt export numbers are not particularly helping to boost confidence that demand recovery is underway, the analysts said.