Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

If this year will go down in British history as another annus horribilis, you have to blame it on the weather. Unseasonal downpours and flooding in June and July not only made the odd sofa float out through an upstairs window and turned front lawns into lakes, they also made a trip down to the pub near impossible. Following the ban on smoking, many pubs have become no-go areas with their entrances blocked by smokers huddling under patio heaters watching the rain drip into their beers. Those, who are lucky enough to get inside, will be greeted by the odours of stale beer, sweat and drains that used to be camouflaged by cigarettes fumes before. Good grief!

Society of Hop Research appoints advisory board

The participants of the 81st general meeting, which took place on the 26th March 2007 in the German Hop Museum in Wolnzach, approved unanimously the installation of an international advisory board. This board was constituted on the very next day at the Paulaner Brewery in Munich.

As in labeling, the same applies to the field of packaging: the machine, the glue, and the materials must harmonize perfectly. For tray and wrap-around packing machines, KHS now also offers a glue precisely corresponding to these applications: Innocoll HMP.

After the preliminary contracts for the acquisition of a majority share in Klöckner by Salzgitter AG were signed in March of this year, the company has now announced the successful conclusion of the sale. After fulfillment of the necessary conditions, notably approval by the EU Commission, Salzgitter AG acquired 78% of Klöckner’s shares on July 5, 2007, giving it, along with the 5% share it already held, an 83% share of capital.

Call it belated poetic justice or just plain market economy. After several failed harvests and a decrease in barley acreage, Germany’s brewers find themselves in a spot of bother when faced with maltsters’ bills. That is, provided maltsters have any malt to sell at all.

Blonde, red, sparking, hot, natural… the 10th annual Pianeta Birra Beverage & Co. International Exhibition of Beer, Beverages, Snacks, Furnishing and Fittings for Pubs & Pizza Parlours will be held in Rimini from 23 to 26 February 2008.

Whose beer will be served at the famous Olympic stadium - that is the question. Will it be Warsteiner, which is the beer sponsor of the Olympic Stadium, or Carlsberg, which is the beer sponsor of the local football team Herta BSC.

Prior to its 2007 interim results, to be released on 29 August, Heineken N.V. announced that it has raised its forecast for organic net profit growth for the full-year ending 31 December 2007.

In July, InBev announced that it has entered into an agreement with Cofinimmo under which it will sell 90 percent of Immobrew, a subsidiary which directly owns 824 pubs and some residential real estate locations in Belgium and indirectly 245 in the Netherlands, for EUR 419 million, on a debt and cash free basis.

Pernod Ricard realised sales of EUR 6,443 million, excluding tax and duties, for the 2006/2007 financial year ended 30 June 2007, which is a year-on-year increase of 6.2 percent.