FDBusiness.com

European brewers and maltsters are likely to face problems sourcing quality malting barley following poor harvests. Heavy rain during harvest time adversely affected grain crops in Germany, Scandinavia and many eastern European countries. Indeed, the size of the European Union barley crop, which is of malting quality, shrank to 10.05 million tones in 2010 from 14.45 million tonnes in 2009. Due to the shortage of supplies, marltsters and brewers will have to use lower quality barley.