The price of Chinese barley, used for beer manufacture, has risen by a margin of 10 per cent in one year for several reasons, reports FoodChina.com. The Chinese beer output has increased. Currently, there are over 600 beer manufacturers in China, producing an estimated total of 22 million tons of beer in 2001, which makes China the world's largest beer producer and seller. The Chinese ouput of barley used for beer has dropped. The main Chinese production areas are the Zhejiang and Jiangsu Provinces, Northwest China and Northeast China. However, barley production has been dropping at a rate of 10 per cent a year for the last three years, due to flood, droughts and low temperatures, and can only meet 50 per cent of total domestic demand. China's imports of foreign barley have fallen 25 per cent in the past 2 years. China's breweries' and malt processors' barley stocks have been severely reduced by about 40 per cent in recent years, and domestic port stocks of beer-use barley have fallen by about 50 per cent over this period. This has made it difficult for domestic brewers to continue normal production schedules.
