DISTILLERS WANT MORE DECANTER SPRING

"We took over 70,000 tonnes of Decanter last year for distilling," says Alan Macdonald, Procurement Manager for Cereals and Raw Materials at Diageo,based in Edinburgh.

"We practice what is known as whole variety intake with Decanter – we buy the grain in and segregate it ourselves according to its protein content. The low N grain then goes for malt distilling and the high N for grain distilling.

"We like the flexibility that Decanter gives us, and it never gives us any problems. We can offer a very specific and real market for this particular variety, and we want Scottish growers to keep on growing it."

Glencore Grain Manager Adrian Fisher, based at Brechin, agrees that Decanter can do very well for Scottish farmers.

"The beauty of Decanter is that it can go into two distinct markets – for malt distilling and grain distilling – with a potential requirement of over 550,000 tonnes within Scotland alone," he says. "This flexibility means the variety is rarely rejected. This takes much of the risk out of growing malting barley – hefty re-direction charges are rarely incurred and loss of premium is rare.

"If it comes in as high nitrogen it goes in the high nitrogen shed, if it is low nitrogen it goes into the low nitrogen shed, but it all will always find a premium. Out of 16,000 tonnes that came into Brechin last year, just 10% was rejected, compared to 25% of all the other spring barley varieties we were offered.

"As well as having flexible marketing options, Decanter also has good agronomic characteristics, with high yields, excellent standing power and stiff, short straw. It is earlier maturing than Optic, and has a very good disease resistance profile. It performed very well in last year's difficult season, and did not brackle like many other crops did while waiting for harvest."

Advice on how to make the most of growing Decanter in Scotland is available from Nickerson (UK) Ltd, based on field trials carried out by Scottish Agronomy in collaboration with Highland Grain and Borders Grain. For a copy of the grower guidelines contact Adrian Fisher at Glencore, telephone (landline phone number), or Mark Glew, spring barley breeder at Nickerson, on telephone 01472 371220.

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For further information contact:

Frank Curtis, Nickerson (UK) Ltd, on 01472 371471

or fcurtis@nickerson.co.uk