Boortmalt is set to serve further cuts to malting barley contracts for 2026, with merchants reporting a 30-40% cut in contracts for 2026.

It comes after the Irish Farmers Journal revealed last week that Stradbally Town and Country had lost its entire malting barley contract for the year, leaving growers in Laois and surrounding areas who have supplied malting barley to produce products like Guinness for over 150 years without a contract.

Reduced demand for distilling barley looks to be playing a role in the 30-40% cuts to merchants. These reductions appear to vary across merchants and regions and no doubt depend on how contracts were filled last year so there is likely to be a difference in the cut to the merchant and the cut to the farmer.

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Over 60% of these Stradbally Town and Country suppliers are reported to have a contract of less than 30ac, meaning a local branch is critical, as haulage by lorry is not practical and is costly

The reductions are much more drastic than the 15% cut to Dairygold and Tirlán growers’ contracts who supply the Malting Company of Ireland which was announced last November.

Malting barley growers who lost their contracts last week were to attend a meeting on Wednesday night, 28 January.

Over 60% of these Stradbally Town and Country suppliers are reported to have a contract of less than 30ac, meaning a local branch is critical, as haulage by lorry is not practical and is costly.

Laois Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) grain chair Rory Doyle said: “We’re third generation malting barley growers on our farm and we got no word whatsoever that this was going to happen. It came out of the blue. We could have sown a lot more winter crops if we had have known.”

Henry Burns, chair of Laois IFA said: “This is a bombshell for Laois. Malting barley is of huge importance in county Laois to add premiums to barley.

“On numerous occasions Stradbally [branch] growers have won malting barley awards and now, all of a sudden, they don’t have the right to grow malting barley. Boortmalt need to come to the table and make sure these growers have contracts for the coming year.”

The news comes ahead of spring planting and leaves these growers without a premium priced product which is crucial for farm incomes, particularly in the current market of high inputs and falling grain prices.

IFA grain chair John Murphy said: “There is no reason why any grower should be taken out completely, it should be unified. If there has to be a cut across the country, there has to be a cut across the country. We’ll deal with that, but there’s no way can any, one grower be singled out.

Talks with Boortmalt

“We will be in talks with Boortmalt shortly. I’m hoping by the end of this week to get them contracts reinstated for those people.”

Former IFA grain chair and Stradbally Town and Country supplier Kieran McEvoy said during his time supplying Boortmalt he moved intakes seven times in order to keep his contract as depots closed. He stuck with it through all that movement and said he was disappointed that the company didn’t inform growers or the IFA about the cut. Before leaving the role of grain chair, he had been looking for a meeting with Boortmalt since the middle of December.