Australia’s largest hop grower is anticipating a recovery in the international hop market.
Richard Watson, a director of the Barth-Haas group, which owns Hop Products Australia, believes the market is stabilising.
“There’s an overproduction at the moment of about 1500 tonnes of alpha,” he said.
“I think that’s going to change, as the price pushes some growers to take hops out, and we hope in the next few years the supply and demand will come into balance.
“We expect that will happen for economic reasons as much as anything.”
Members of the International Hop Congress have been touring Tasmania this week, debating and discussing the future of both beer and hops.
Twenty representatives from 10 countries, including the world’s largest hop producers, Germany and the US, have been visiting Tasmania’s historic hop fields in the Derwent Valley.
With a history dating back 150 years, it’s a relative newcomer compared to the Hallertau region of Germany, which has been growing hops for 1,000 years.