Europe's brewers suffer from hot weather

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Europe's brewers suffer from hot weather

August 07, 2018 - 16:06
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Even beer was affected by unusually hot summer in Europe, Bloomberg writes. Barley crops in northern Europe suffered from hot and dry weather, creating problems for brewers, which need to buy malt.

Photo © Bruno Glätsch, CC0 1.0

Even beer was affected by unusually hot summer in Europe, Bloomberg writes.

Barley crops in northern Europe suffered from hot and dry weather, creating problems for brewers, which need to buy malt. Yield of key producers in Scandinavia, northern Germany and Baltic countries could be 30-40 percent lower than normal.

Price for barley is already rising, and costs will be transferred to supply chain. Some German brewers already started increasing price of beer.

Deficit of malting barley will be about 490000 ton this season. It is the first deficit in eight years.

Quality of barley is also diminishing due to bad weather. Companies producing malt will have to pay more to get feed of higher quality.

French barley price grew by more than 35% since April to the highest level since 2013. However, crops from France might replace shortage of barley in northern Europe.

Meanwhile, experts think that there will be no significant rise of final product price, since barley is only a small portion of beer’s cost.