Fields of barley

Namibia Breweries Limited (NBL) aims to harvest 12 000 hectares of raw barley over the next ten years.
“The future of the home-grown barley project by Namibia Breweries Limited, subsidiary of the Ohlthaver & List (O&L) Group, looks bright,” says project manager Martin Krafft.
For the year to date, 377 hectares of barley have been planted (257 hectares at Ndonga Linena - 90km east of Rundu and 120 hectares at Shadikongoro - 200 km east of Rundu).
The project expects to harvest about 1 800 tons of raw barley by the end of November 2016.
This year, government availed 380 ha of existing irrigation land to the project and planted barley under irrigation as part of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry; government’s Agriculture Business Development (AgriBusDev) - managing and coordinating the Green Schemes - and NBL.
This is the first year of the ten-year Barley Industry Development Plan (BIDP) which is governed by the MoU and the acting technical committee, thus far proving to be a successful public-private-partnership (PPP).
Due to the good collaboration between AgriBusDev (Petrus Uugwanga), the farm managers of Shadikongoro, Danie Marais, and Ndonga Linena Agricultural Project, Titus Andreas as well as the O&L internal expertise of Floris Smith, Krafft remains confident about the future of homegrown barley. “This is a very positive project kick-off. Hopes are high that the barley planted results in a good quality harvest for NBL and decent returns for AgriBusDev as well as the small-scale farmers involved. This would allow us to plant more barley next year,” said Krafft.
According to him provided that product quality and yield requirements are achieved a year-on-year increase of roughly 1 500 hectares of barley planted per annum is aimed for.
“Eventually, the goal is to gradually replace the import of about 40 000 tons of malted barley. NBL intends to source all raw barley locally. This, however, requires investing into a local malting plant which seems to be feasible when the project reaches the benchmark of harvesting 15 000 tons of local raw barley per year.”
NBL has imported malted barley as a key ingredient for most of its current beer brands.
According to NBL managing director, Wessie van der Westhuizen the company initiated and invested into barley trials in 2010 with the intent of establishing a local barley industry that would create jobs and support the local economy.
“It will support our local agricultural sector in rural areas which is something we are just as passionate about as making good beer. We believe that a dollar spent locally is a dollar spent towards bettering the lives of Namibians and we are therefore committed to doing everything we can to procure locally whenever possible.”
Since the commencement of the barley trials, NBL has so far invested more than N$5.5 million into the barley project for trial planning, execution, seeds, laboratory and brewing trials, as well as shipments and transport. This excludes the product innovation work that has gone into developing the new brand, King Lager - a quality homegrown beer that is proudly brewed using good quality Namibian raw barley.

STAFF REPORTER