As feed barley prices surpassed €300/t this week, malting barley suppliers remained in the dark with regard to any indication of harvest price.

Boortmalt, Ireland’s largest purchaser of malting barley by far – with capacity to take in approximately 180,000t – has failed to disclose where current prices sit.

Suppliers are trying to gain access to the French Free-On-Board (FOB) Creil price used to calculate the price here in Ireland.

Harvest price

In 2019, it was agreed that the Boortmalt harvest price would be based on the average FOB Creil price (dry) from week 15 (mid-April) to week 38 (mid-September). Averaging started in week 16 in 2021.

We are currently in week 16. At the time the Irish Farmers Journal was going to print no price was available and it is not clear if averaging is going ahead.

The FOB Creil price is a relatively small market and access is not widely available. Boortmalt made fixed price offers of €250/t and €270/t in November and February respectively.

Farmers could fix the price of up to 40% of what they intended to grow.

The Irish Farmers Journal has requested access to the FOB Creil price from Boortmalt on numerous occasions.

In addition to this, we asked if ongoing price updates will be made available to farmers and if not, why so.

No response has been received to date.

In previous years the IFA had access to this price. However, the Irish Farmers Journal understands Boortmalt has yet to meet the IFA officially this season.