Boortmalt has settled its harvest base price for 2024.

The company uses an averaging system to calculate the price it pays to Irish suppliers.

The harvest price has finished the averaging process at €257.69/t and is subject to a €10/t charge, meaning the final base price is €247.69/t.

Boortmalt takes the average price of the Free-On-Board (FOB) Creil Planet price for malting barley in France at the close of business every Wednesday from mid-April to mid-September and uses the average of these prices to calculate the harvest price.

The company then takes €10/t off this price to cover some of its handling charges. It a percentage of a farmer’s barley passes for distilling then €10/t is added on to this price.

The highest price throughout the averaging process was €282/t. The lowest price was €239/t on 22 August (see Table 1 with prices supplied by Boortmalt).

Fixed price offers

Some farmers have already fixed prices for some of their barley. Earlier this season, Boortmalt offered growers €270/t and €240/t for barley. They could fix the price on up to 20% of their contract for each offer.

So, a farmer who took up both offers in full has now fixed the price of 40% of their barley at an average of €255/t. Those farmers will then be paid the harvest price on the remaining barley.

If someone did not take any fixed price offer, then they will be paid the harvest price on 100% of their barley.

Bushel deduction

Last week, Boortmalt announced details of a change to bushel or hectolitre weight (KPH) levels at its malting barley intakes.

The cutoff for bushel levels was 63. Some intakes saw high rejections, with levels much lower than this.

Merchants assembling barley for Boortmalt told growers on Friday that malting barley would be accepted levels of 60 to 63. However, this barley will be hit with a price deduction of €25/t.