It is comfortably the world’s biggest brewer, with more than 500 beer brands, 200,000 employees and sales in more than 150 countries.
However, in a nod to localism, Anheuser-Busch InBev has declared that from a standing start three years ago, more than 50 per cent of the barley used in its Budweiser lager is now grown on British farms — and it is aiming to get to 100 per cent.
The brewer’s UK operation produces more than 15 million bottles and cans of Budweiser a week at its two breweries in Magor, south Wales, and Samlesbury, Lancashire, which the company said required “tens of thousands of tonnes of high-quality malting barley”.
It said malting barley was traditionally difficult to grow in the UK but the development of new varieties of grain under its Smartbarley programme had enabled British farmers to grow the crop in parts of the country that were previously deemed unsuitable, such as the east Midlands.
Under the programme, which is being run in partnership with Crisp Malting Group, Glencore Grain and Agrii, an agronomy services group, the number of participating farmers has increased from eight to 147 since 2014, while the average number of acres per farm more than doubled from 62 to 151. This has added the equivalent of 11,000 football pitches of malting barley.
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The company, which already operates the Smartbarley scheme with 4,500 growers in ten countries, previously used barley from America and continental Europe to make Budweiser in the UK. A spokeswoman said it aimed to source all its barley in Britain “in the next couple of years” but it was difficult to be precise given the 15 per cent year-on-year growth of Budweiser and the recent launch of Bud Light.
Jason Warner, president of AB InBev UK & Ireland, said the Smartbarley programme was having a “great impact on British agriculture”.