Beer Craze May Boost Australian Barley Shipments to India

· Australian barley growers could soon be raising a glass to India’s swelling cohort of beer drinkers, who are being eyed as a potential market for some of the country’s excess stocks of the grain, after its biggest buyer China all but halted imports this year.

· While India’s beer market was only worth about $7.8 billion last year -- a fraction of the U.S.’s $105.4 billion market, according to Euromonitor research -- the sheer pace of population growth there, coupled with an increasing thirst for craft beer among younger and wealthier people, means it has the potential to grow into one of the world’s largest consumers of the beverage.

· With India’s population growing by 15 million per year, the industry will need to make an additional 2 million hectoliters between 2019-24 -- or 80 Olympic swimming pools worth, Bloomberg Intelligence predicts.

· Any additional demand from brewers would be a boon for Australian barley prices, which slumped to among the cheapest in the world following China’s decision to apply 80% tariffs as trade tensions between the two countries escalated