UK: Malt Industry fights back with world-leading scheme
A world-leading assurance scheme run by the UK Malt industry is helping it to fight back against the problem of over-supply in the market. In his annual statement to the industry, Euan MacPherson, Chairman of the Maltsters Association of Great Britain (MAGB) claims that the recently re-launched Assured UK Malt scheme has no equivalent anywhere in the world.
He says: “At this year’s Drinktec exhibition we launched the latest phase of the Assured UK Malt scheme. On the evidence of research carried out before the event, and on intelligence gathered at the event itself, I have no hesitation in saying that no other country in the world has a scheme to match it.
“No other country can claim to have brought their malt industry together in a scheme that: includes all the country’s major producers; brings together all aspects of the supply chain; includes over 25,000 farms in three assurance schemes; is independently audited and is accredited by an internationally recognised body.”
This positive step forward comes at a difficult time for the industry in which issues include increasing energy costs, additional capacity coming online in an already oversupplied industry, particularly in Russia, and bilateral trade agreements that put UK maltsters at a disadvantage.
However, Euan points out that the UK remains the second largest malt-producing nation in the EU, and UK maltsters will still require about 1.7 million tonnes of UK malting barley from the 2005 crop.
The Assured UK Malt (AUKM) scheme is the only accredited malt scheme in the world, meeting the high standards set by the International Accreditation Forum, and administered by UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Services). Since its launch two years ago, the scheme has been expanded to include not just food safety but also product legality, good operational practice and product quality. For brewers and distillers, the AUKM scheme provides malt that is fully traceable and guaranteed to have been subjected to independently audited standards.
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