This year Germany’s brewers face a deficit of one million tons of malt. Prices for malt have already more than doubled. An angry Bitburger brewer apparently challenged maltsters by saying: “we have other ways ….” When his threat was leaked to the press, Bitburger was forced to reaffirm its commitment to the German Reinheitsgebot.

It may just be an indication as to how fierce the battle for market share has become in Western Europe’s saturated beer markets that Heineken had taken InBev to court claiming they had violated Heineken’s patent on its home draught beer system. In January the case was settled.

In a tough market which has seen consumption decline 20 percent between 1991 and 2005, InBev has attempted to revitalise its business through the sale of breweries and the rationalisation of remaining operations. Dinkelacker-Schwabenbräu is the third brewery InBev has sold within one year.

Calculated simplicity, high flexibility, maximum future-proof investment – these are the features offered by the new KHS inline robot grouping. The particularly gentle handling of finished packaging is another. At the same time, it compensates for the ever lighter and thinner walls of the bottle and can packages or cartons and pouches used.

The European Brewery Convention (EBC) invites interested parties from the ancillary industry as well as from research institutes, universities and brewing schools to present themselves and their work during the upcoming EBC congress at Venice.

The Barth Haas Group, the leading vertically-integrated player in the hop industry, announces the introduction of the Barth Haas Grant. With these grants the Group wants to support research activities that focus on the use of hops and hop products in all kinds of brewing applications.

The European Brewery Convention (EBC) is pleased to announce its report “EBC – two years variety summary for 2004 and 2005; Spring Barley”.

The market development in the region initiated SABMiller to replace a 1.3 million hl brewing plant of Cervecería del Valle, at the Yumbo site in Columbia, with a completely new plant achieving a much higher efficiency. The turnkey plant is being erected as a greenfield project and will meet all the requirements of world class manufacturing. This means: constant high quality standards and maximum efficiency with lowest expenditure of energy, virtually no impact on the environment thanks to a consistent reduction in waste material and featuring a lean operator structure.

With Fruit Up®, Wild offers the optimum sweetener for beverages with natural ingredients.

More toys for boys

What does a man need? If the ‘must-have’ columns in men’s magazines are to be believed, a digital camera, an MP3 music player and a mobile phone are cool gadgets for grown-up boys. However, what do you do if you already possess all of the above? You buy yourself a boys’ toy by Heineken … says Heineken! Not that there is a real need for men to have their own draught beer appliance cluttering up their kitchen top. But Heineken’s R&D department must have thought that they were on to a good idea. And male consumers have been buying these kits in droves according to Heineken’s recent corporate statement. Heineken reported that in the first half of 2006, beer volume generated by recent innovative beer systems such as DraughtKeg, BeerTender and the David draught system grew more than 30 percent, albeit from a low volume base.