South Africa: Soufflet Malt and Heineken to build a new malting plant near Johannesburg

Soufflet Malt and Heineken have entered into a commercial partnership in which the French grain group will invest 100 million euros ($108.51 million) to build a new malting factory in South Africa to supply malt to the Dutch brewer, CNBC Africa reported on March 7.

The malt factory, which is Souffle’s second in Africa, will be located next to Heineken’s Sedibeng Brewery near Johannesburg, and is set to be operational by mid-2027.

The partnership “means replacing 4,500 containers of barley coming from abroad for local barley from local shops, making sure that we got a shorter supply chain,” Heineken Managing Director Jordi Borrut said at the signing event.

Right now, Heineken imports all of its barley for its South African operations.

Soufflet Malt, one of the world’s largest malt makers, will source 100% of the barley locally from South African commercial and small scale farmers and will supply malt to Heineken’s operations in the country, Jeremy Antier the managing director of Soufflet South Africa said at the same event.

With a production capacity of nearly 100,000 tonnes, the facility will create 55 full-time jobs and support over 200 local South African barley growers, Jeremy said.

Jordi said the partnership also forms part of its merger commitments with wine and cider maker Distell to procure key inputs from local suppliers, producers and farmers.