Canadian Wheat Board Malt Barley Prices: Offerings and PROs

Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) offering prices for domestic malt barley
The primary buyers of western Canadian malt barley from the Canadian Wheat Board are Canada, the U.S. and China. The Canadian Wheat Board tries to charge a different price to each buyer, subject to competitive conditions.

Each day the CWB releases offering prices to Canadian buyers/users of malt barley. The offering price reflects the price at which the CWB will sell malt barley to domestic maltsters who have indicated that they will be selling their malt to Canadian brewers (see tables below).

CWB prices to importers of malt barley
The prices at which the CWB is willing to sell to other countries or to maltsters who are selling malt outside Canada are not publicly available. The Canadian industry is usually charged the highest price, followed by the U.S., and other countries such as China.

The primary buyers of malt barley, from the CWB, are:

('000 tonnes)

	Canada	United States	China	Other
1999-00	1,402	585	428	139
2000-01	1,051	554	552	116
2001-02	1,150	452	400	203
2002-03	566	172	45	131
2003-04	961	511	427	382
2004-05	839	140	678	84
2005-06	749	67	404	192
2006-07	975	282	395	136

Source: Canadian Wheat Board Annual Reports

CWB payments to farmers
Under the single desk selling system farmers cannot sell directly to the maltster. All malt barley must be sold through the CWB into the pool account. The CWB estimates these total returns through its Pool Return Outlook (PRO). During the year, farmers receive an initial payment (sometimes adjusted upwards) and, in most years, a final payment. The sum of the payments is the total pooled return, which reflects the blended price at which malt barley was sold by the CWB to all the markets.

CWB weekly offering prices
The graphs below show weekly CWB Offering prices, CWB PROs, and CWB Initial prices. The difference between offering prices and PROs is apparent. The graphs show that because the offering price to domestic purchasers is considerably greater than the PRO, export prices must be considerably lower.

Graph 1 shows CWB values in general and Graph 2 shows CWB values backed off to Alberta.

Graph 1

Graph 2

Graph 3

*Please note that for the 2008/2009 year PRO reporting changed from Special Select 2 Row Barley to Select 2 Row Barley.

For more information about the content of this document, contact Julie Toma.
This information published to the web on February 23, 2005.
Last Reviewed/Revised on August 27, 2008.