Australia: ABB Grain announces malting barley sliding scale for 2005/2006 season

Major Australian agribusiness ABB Grain Ltd announced on September 26 its sliding scale adjustments for the 2005/2006 season malting barley pool, enabling growers who deliver Malting 3 quality barley in South Australia to benefit from better returns.

ABB�s general manager marketing, Nigel Officer, said that malting barley deliveries into an SA pool option for the coming harvest, that had less than 70% retention and protein levels between 9% and 12.8%, would be graded as Malt 3, and have the sliding scale applied to it.

The sliding scale reflects market value for the malting barley based on protein level and the retention percentage of grower deliveries.

�The scale basically benefits growers who deliver Schooner or Sloop varieties of barley, but just miss out on their grain being graded Malt 1,� Mr Officer said.�The sliding scale will apply to SA pool deliveries only.�

Mr Officer said that the sliding scale would only apply to Schooner and Sloop varieties. Other varieties, such as Gairdner and Baudin, were predominantly for domestic use and, as there was little demand for Malting 3 grain in these varieties, ABB would have no Malt 3 segregations for these varieties.

�What we�re trying to do with the sliding scale is to stop the �cliff face� type of grading for malting barley, where a delivery is either Malting 1, Malting 3 or Feed 1 quality,� he said.

�We�re trying to actively encourage better quality barley into the South Australian pool for export and send signals to growers who deliver Malting 3 barley that they will be rewarded monetarily on the basis of quality.�