E-Malt.com News article: 3754

Australia: Listed agricultural company, ABB Grain Ltd, announced on November 30, 2004 will spend $40 million doubling the size of its Western Australian malting plant to 200,000 tonnes capacity, creating one of the largest malting facilities in the world at its Forrestfield site. ABB managing director, Michael Iwaniw, said the company’s nine malting plants around Australia were operating at capacity to supply long-term domestic and export malting contracts and had little room to service the growing malt markets in Asia.

“We can see tremendous opportunities in Asia, where beer consumption is continuing to grow. This development will increase our capacity by 25 pc to 500,000 tonnes, allowing us to service that expanding market,” Mr Iwaniw said. “As Australian malt manufacturers we have a significant market advantage in that this region as Australia not only produces top quality malting barley but we have a considerable geographic advantages in that region over suppliers based in Europe or Canada.”

“In addition the Asian markets have shown a preference for Australian malt, for a variety of quality related reasons and we want to position ourselves to use that to grow our Joe White brand in the region.” Mr Iwaniw said ABB had examined expansion opportunities at each of its existing sites as well as greenfield sites, before concluding that the Forrestfield plant was the best suited for expansion. “The key factors were barley availability and shipping facilities. The fact that the Forrestfield plant was originally planned with the potential for such duplication was ultimately the deciding factor,” he said.

“The site which is adjacent to CBH’s Metro Grain Centre at Forrestfield, is strategically located, with good freight access to the major barley growing regions.”

The expansion will involve the duplication of the existing steeping, germination and kilning facilities at the Forrestfield site. There will be focus on water-use efficiency in line with the group’s strategy on water use and treatment in malt processing. It was planned to work with local authorities to develop environmentally friendly water re-use strategies that would allow plant water to be recycled. Mr Iwaniw said, pending some final paper work, site works for the plant would commence in December with actual construction beginning early in 2005 with a view to commencing production in early 2006.


01 December, 2004