Russia: Russian Brewery Ochakovo entered agreements with 60 farms in Belgorod and Lipetsk regions to purchase 100 thousand tonnes of malting barley of crop 2005. The acquired barley will be used to manufacture malt at its malting complex in Lipetsk region, which was founded as far back as in 2003. In 2005 Ochakovo is planning to launch its second malting plant in Belgorod. Every malt pant of Ochakovo has a production capacity of 100 thousand tonnes per year.

It is well known that most barley grown in Russia does not correspond to brewing standards, Russian analysts commented. However, Ochakovo has decided to invest in Russian barley growing in order not to import malt. To this purpose Ochakovo has acquired from the German company BayWa AG a lot of selected seeds of malting barley (Scarlet variety) to be delivered to Russian farms for growing. Ochakovo has as well received the licence from BayWa AG to reproduce these German selected seeds. By 2007 Ochakovo plans to be able to provide itself with malting barley seeds entirely from its own sources.

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