EU: Analysts about malting industry expansion

In retrospect the malting industry expansion inside the EU was a great error: Austria 25,000 metric tonnes (mt), Belgium 60,000 mt (net), France 80,000 mt, Germany 25,000 mt (net), Lithuania 60,000 mt (net), Netherlands 130,000 mt, Sweden 80,000 mt, totally 460,000 mt. Of course, every company that constructed had good reasons: technical improvements cutting cost, construction in seaports, partnerships with barley-originating cooperatives. Closures of older units accounted for a total of 175,000 mt in the U.K., Ireland and Slovakia.

Adding the figures of malting expansion, 285,000 mt after deducting closures, a loss of exports of 300,000 mt in 2004/05 and possibly another 300,000 mt next year, one arrives at an overcapacity figure of almost one Million tons. No wonder the mood at the recent RM conference was somber. Closures, mergers, acquisitions will change the present structure of the industry in a not too distant future.

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