Malt exports boom

Press, 2 December 1981, Page 14

Malt exports boom

The Canterbury Malting Company is increasing its exports of malt spectacularly. According to the general manager of the company, Mr H. P. Kearney, the company had confirmed sales of 17,000 tonnes, which would require about 24,000 tonnes of barley from the crop to be harvested early next year. Prospects of additional sales were also likely.

Malt export is a relatively new development and the exports now in view compare with less than 5000 tonnes from last season’s barley crop. Mr Kearney said that increased quantities of malt would be returning to markets to which they had already made deliveries this year. The company had also increased its customers. The malt will go to Japan,

Manila, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, and Western Samoa. Some South American countries are also definite prospects. Mr Kearney said, however, that the company had lost its market in South Korea, whose government had required breweries to use domestic resources although of inferior quality. Because of a barley surplus in South Korea the government there was encouraging farmers to plant less rice, and barley constituted an alternative crop. This was one of the first markets that the firm had gone into, said Mr Kearney, and there had been total acceptance of the New Zealand product. The company was now able to keep its two plants at Heathcote and Marton at full capacity. This meant that it would be able to process much of the barley crop that had been contracted. When contracts had been made with growers earlier in the year they had been made in anticipation of increasing exports and this had now been achieved.