Irish beer and spirit brands such as Guinness and Jameson depend on Irish grain for their brand identity, a Boortmalt representative was reminded this week. Pierre-Eric Souplet was speaking at the Teagasc malting barley seminar in Athy on Monday evening and remarked that if Irish malting barley supply became unsustainable, customers would be “quite happy” importing barley.
Irish beer and spirit brands such as Guinness and Jameson depend on Irish grain for their brand identity, a Boortmalt representative was reminded this week.
Pierre-Eric Souplet was speaking at the Teagasc malting barley seminar in Athy on Monday evening and remarked that if Irish malting barley supply became unsustainable, customers would be “quite happy” importing barley.
This was strongly contested from the floor, with farmers highlighting the importance of the Irishness of internationally famous brands.
Former IFA grain chair Liam Dunne also contested Souplet’s suggestion that Irish barley was “expensive”, pointing out that the cost of drying Irish barley from the base price moisture level of 20% was less than the cost of shipping dry (14% moisture) barley from the continent to Boortmalt’s plant in Athy.
Souplet also revealed that only 6,000t of the 20,000t on offer at €190/t had been taken up by growers before the offer was pulled last Friday evening.
No limit
This is surprising as there was no limit put on how much an individual farmer could sell at this price.
This suggests that growers are solidly backing the IFA’s call for further negotiations over price.
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