Swiss based agri-business Ameropa will close its Hamburg-based malting barley trading firm Interbrau at the end of 2017. The company said that Interbrau would not undertake any new longer-lasting trading activities but all existing contracts would be honored. “This decision is mainly driven by the fact that the malting barley market did not develop as Ameropa had expected and there are too little commonalities between the malting barley trade and Ameropa’s core business,” Ameropa said in a statement on Thursday.
And the company added: “Ameropa’s core business consists in the trading of fertilizers, wheat, corn and oilseeds. These are areas where Ameropa identified significant growth potential on which Ameropa would like to focus.”
Ameropa bought Interbrau, which was already founded in 1961, in 2009 but was never really happy with the purchase. It already tried to sell Interbrau in 2015 but a reported sale to French group Vivescia did not materialize because the parties could not agree on all terms.
Malting barley trade intensified last year when Munich based trading and services company BayWa acquired Evergrain from Hamburg, and Agravis Raiffeisen from Hannover founded international malting barley trading firm Graincom also in Hamburg.
Ameropa did not comment on the future of Interbrau’s managing director Sönke Weich and his team of about one dozen people.
