Member Spotlight: CMBTC 2025 mission to Mexico

The Canadian Malt Barley Technical Centre ( CMBTC) led a trade mission to Mexico from October 22 to 30 with participants from SaskBarley and Alberta Grains. With several key stakeholders meetings, the objective of the trip was to work toward strengthening trade for Canadian barley and malt in the sizeable Mexican market.

They are keen to strengthen trade with Canada, evidenced by recent purchase of malting barley and continued sourcing of Canadian malt and ongoing diplomacy. As national priorities shift to market diversification, exploring and establishing relationships in key markets like Mexico is imperative.

There are meaningful opportunities to ramp up malting barley exports and capture more of the market but requires strategic efforts from suppliers, building familiarity with new varies and relationship building.

Facts about the Mexican Market

Mexico is the fourth largest beer producing nation in the world = 136-143 million hL (2023), $7.8 billion CAD in exports to the US alone.
Mexico imports approx. 400-500K tonnes/year of malting barley (Australia/France). For the first time since 2020 Mexico purchased around 33,000 tonnes of malting barley, a positive sign, and something CMTBC sought to build on in this mission.
Despite their large beer production, Mexico has a limited domestic malting capacity of approx. 686K tonnes, the rest is met through imports largely from US (64% share) and Canada (13.3%) 76K tonnes in 2024. Mexico is the third largest malt importer at a total of 573K tonnes.
Large multinational companies like Grupo Modelo (AB InBev) Heineken FEMSA, and Constellation Brands, dominate, Mexico’s beer industry; however, Mexico’s brewing landscape is diversifying with a growing craft industry and growing fast.
Since most malt production in Mexico is integrated with the large brewers; craft production relies on imported malt - an opportunity for Canadian suppliers, offering consistent traceable quality.
The growth in the craft industry underscores wider trends toward premiumization, sustainable and ingredient innovation - creating new avenues for Canadian barley and malt to explore - in country and through technical training.
CMBTC has leveraged export-marketing support from the federal government for the barley/malt growth to develop new markets (especially outside of the USA) including Mexico.
The Canadian origin offers characteristics valued by brewers/malsters: quality, reliability, sustainability, evolving varieties - that build credibility for longer-term growth/partnerships.
CMBTC’s work is driven by the needs of our customers - like international malsters and brewers.

For a full report contact: Shannon Sereda ssereda@albertagrains.com