The announcement came shortly after Carlsberg’ s divestiture of its Norwegian brewery Arendal. Carlsberg had said earlier that it intends to shut down breweries in Leeds in the UK and in Pori in Finland.

Caroline is the Director of Brewing and the Nutfield Site, Campden BRi, UK. She holds a doctorate in Biochemistry and has wide international research experience from her work in the UK, USA and also at the Carlsberg Laboratories. Caroline joined BRI in 1999 and worked her way through a series of management roles in various technical areas before being appointed as the Director of Brewing in 2009. Caroline has overall responsibilities for all of the activities at Nutfield, including information services, training, pilot plant work, flavour & innovation, research and development, regulatory affairs, wine services and microbiology.

Dr Bertram succeeds Dr Gerold Linzbach who, for personal reasons, has not asked for his contract to be renewed when it expires on 22nd October 2009. He is leaving Symrise by mutual consent after four successful years at the helm of the company.

The beer is produced with specifically designed brewing equipment, which is meanwhile used as means of demonstration in process engineering courses. Today, 50 to 100 litres of "Campusperle" are brewed per month. Thanks to widespread media attention, the bottom fermented beer and its history are known far beyond the Hamburg region. The beer is served at TUHH events and adds flavour to the life on and off the campus. This year, a baker in Hamburg has started to bake bread called "Campusperle beer bread" with the spent grains from the brewing process. Beer brewing has even become part of the students’ lessons: the first studies on beer filtration are in progress and the beer brewing process is part of a lecture for first-year students.

Marko Cerneka, Area Manager Industry Division of Velo explains that while the beer demand was substantially constant there has been a growing demand for special artisan beers of high quality. „We are not talking of large quantities,“ he says, „but we are experiencing a trend which is evident and concerns the supply to a market made up of brew pubs, with sale and consumption in the place and small breweries that bottle and sell also to a whole province or to a whole region. The Italian production is particularly attentive to this kind of requests. Even if, in the field of large plants, there is still a German leadership, concerning the mid- and small-sized breweries Italy is gaining great merit, thanks to the flexibility of its productions, capable of meeting the requirements of the market and of the single customers that, nowadays, are more and more oriented towards multifunctional plants”.

BWI: Ms. Westphal, drinktec 2009 is approaching rapidly. Are you satisfied with the status of preparations?

It is not that the Swedish Government has kept its plans under wraps until the last moment. Far from it. For years the Swedish Government has said that Europe should adopt Sweden’s restrictive alcohol policies because it produces health benefits.

Belgian media reported that the world’s largest brewer was selling its central European operations because they are considered non-strategic. The markets are fragmented with more than two players operating in each and earnings are low. Small wonder that AB-InBev hopes to focus on its more profitable north and south American operations.

Heineken, the Czech Republic’s number three brewer, said on 15 June that it would close two breweries, Kutna Hora and Znojmo.

We remember only too well what Heineken’s CEO Jean-François van Boxmeer said in February upon releasing last year’s financial results. He said that “in particular, the performance in the UK was below expectations as the combination of recession, on-trade downturn, unprecedented excise duty rises, the smoking ban and the fall in the value of the British pound made the market exceptionally challenging.”