News and Reports
The Barth Report – Hops 2009-10
[ An excerpt from the Foreward ]
"Following the 2007 harvest, encouraged by the prospect of long-term contracts, the additional acreage demanded by the brewing industry was planted. Just when crop volume in 2008 suggested that global supply shortage on the hop market had been eradicated, the world economic crisis and the new market situation made the hop world quake. The quantity of alpha acid now required is significantly lower than the figure calculated by the brewing industry only three years ago, and crop 2009 will present the hop and brewing industries with further supplies of alpha acid that are surplus to requirements"
The Barth Report – Hops 2008-09
[ An excerpt from the Market Analysis section ]
Against the backdrop of a very pronounced financial and economic crisis on a global scale, world hop production volume in 2008 reached an all-time record level in tonnes of alpha acids.
The high volume of alpha acid produced in Germany played a significant part in this development. The hop supply crisis that had affected the brewing industry since crop year 2006 thus came to an end and the latterly completely overheated market settled down again. The price boom that had persisted since the summer of 2006 due to the supply shortage in the hop market finally ended in January 2009. The short duration of the spot market in Germany was unusual, but also understandable in view of the growing world economic crisis. This was despite the fact that hardly any market formed in the USA for lack of available hops. Farm-gate purchasing began in late September and finished only three weeks later. In view of the high spot prices, particularly for high alpha varieties, reaching a peak of 10.50 EUR/kg in Germany, all the trading companies very quickly abandoned their spot purchasing activities as they were afraid that they would be left holding large and expensive stocks at the end of the marketing campaign.
The Barth Report – Hops 2007-08
[ An excerpt from the Market Analysis section ]
Crop year 2007 will go down in the history of the hop industry as the year of the turbo boom. The extent of the scarcity of hops and the resulting explosion in prices took the market participants at all levels by surprise.
And yet this drama was structurally foreseeable. In the spring of 2007 it was already clear that the supply bottlenecks resulting from the high global growth in the brewing industry, and in the absence of any notable increase in acreage, were not to be resolved without an outstanding harvest in 2007. The hoped for record harvest did not arrive.