The annual survey of rejections of barley from UK malting sites

Maltsters feel it most important that there is good feedback to their suppliers, so that the supplier can evaluate their performance.

In an attempt to show how closely to specification suppliers have delivered the barley they have sold to maltsters it may be useful to record each year the tonnage of barley rejected from maltings sites as non-compliant in terms of sales specification, which includes food safety issues. MAGB members have agreed to supply this information to its secretariat each year, with the objective of building up a history of malting barley delivery performance. We run this survey in the autumn of each year, once all deliveries from the previous years malting barley crop have been made to maltsters. There is no obligation on maltsters to take part in this data collation, but most have shown strong support for the idea, and are able to provide the following information.

From the 2010 crop a total of 21 sites were covered by the 7 largest member companies, the results were as follows:

From those 21 sites a total of 32,571 tonnes of grain were rejected, equating to 2.89% of the total tonnage presented at the gate, for the reasons shown in the table above.

From the 2009 crop a total of 25 sites were covered by the 8 largest member companies, the results were as follows:

 From those 25 sites a total of 75,131 tonnes of grain were rejected, equating to 4.95% of the total tonnage presented at the gate, for the reasons shown in the table above.

From the 2008 crop a total of 21 sites were covered by the 7 largest member companies, the results were as follows:

From those 21 sites a total of 71,838 tonnes of grain were rejected, equating to 4.53% of the total tonnage presented at the gate, for the reasons shown in the table above.

From the 2007 crop a total of 21 sites were covered by the 7 largest member companies, the results were as follows:

From those 21 sites a total of 35,892 tonnes of grain were rejected, equating to 2.52% of the total tonnage presented at the gate, for the reasons shown in the table above.

For the 2006 crop a total of 22 sites were covered by the 8 largest member companies, the results were as follows:

From those 22 sites a total of 42,534 tonnes of grain were rejected, equating to 2.71% of the total tonnage presented at the gate, for the reasons shown above.

For the 2005 crop a total of 21 sites were covered by the 7 largest member companies, the results were as follows:

From those 21 sites a total of 48,870 tonnes of grain were rejected, equating to 3.57% of the total tonnage presented at the gate, for the reasons shown above.

For the 2004 crop an average of 5.96% of the total tonnage presented to the maltings was rejected. The results were as follows:

7 of the largest member companies took part in the survey, accounting for 22 sites, and 86,441 tonnes of grain was rejected from those sites for the above reasons.

For the 2003 crop we increased the range of refusal reasons, to explore the 'other reasons' list. The results were as follows:

22 sites took part in the 2003 crop rejection survey, and the total grain rejected was 53,765 tonnes, or 2.87% of the total barley delivered to those 22 sites.

We already had Data from the 2002 crop, which was as follows: