It’s Miller time for Canadian malting barley growers.
U.S.-based Miller Brewing Co., the world’s second biggest brewer, has decided to import two varieties of six-row malting barley from Canada.
The brewery has signed a supply contract with Canada Malting Co., which is now busy talking to growers and grain companies about planting Robust and Lacey, the two varieties in demand from Miller.
Ironically, one of those varieties was well down the list of recommended varieties for prairie farmers to grow in 2006, while the other wasn’t on the list at all.
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“Miller has decided to purchase some malt out of Canada to help diversify their risk management and those are two of their preferred varieties,” said Steven Gorst, general manager of Canada Malting.
He declined to say how much malt will be shipped under the contract, but said the deal provides a significant new opportunity for Canadian growers and processors.
“It’s certainly a new thing for Canadian maltsters to be supplying malt directly to Miller Brewing in this kind of volume.”
Most of Canada’s six-row malting barley exports to the United States have gone to Anheuser-Busch, which has different brewing requirements than other U.S. breweries.
“The six-row varieties that they push are suited to their brewing needs and not necessarily other companies,” said Rob McCaig, managing director of the Canadian Malting Barley Technical Institute.
“Now for the first time we have another large U.S. brewing company looking at Canada as a supplier.”
The contract with Miller has breathed new life into the variety Robust, a traditional six-row barley that had dropped down the recommended varieties list for 2006 as a result of limited demand.
It had been the top variety as recently as 2004, but in the last couple of years had fallen well behind Legacy and Excel and the up-and-coming Tradition, due to lack of demand and agronomic problems involving disease resistance and yield.
“If it hadn’t been picked up this year, I think it would have disappeared as a wanted variety,” said McCaig.
Lacey, the other variety named in the contract, is an American variety that hasn’t been grown much in Western Canada and didn’t appear on the recommended varieties list.
Despite that, Gorst said Canada Malting doesn’t expect any trouble getting enough production to meet the contract, saying the company has already embarked on an aggressive promotional program with grain companies and farmers and has good support from the Canadian Wheat Board.
He said he also expects this will be the beginning of a dependable long-term market for Canadian six-row malting barley.
Mike Grenier, agronomist with the wheat board, said Robust has always performed well and been popular with producers, but the market was calling for Legacy and Excel.
He also welcomed news of the contract with Miller, noting that overall demand for six-row from the U.S. has been on the decline.
“This is a good sign,” he said. “It’s good news for producers.”
Over the past five years, six-row varieties have accounted for, on average, just nine percent of domestic demand, along with 37 percent of export shipments.
