CAPTIVATE is a “Craft Malting Process Innovation for a Competitive and Collaborative Rural Economy”. Building on our global micro maltings business. Custom Laboratory Products Ltd (“CLP”) has applied its 30 years’ sector knowledge to develop a highly innovative craft malting process, suitable for on-farm use.
In 2014, both Europe’s farming and food sectors provided 7% of all jobs and generated 6% of European gross domestic product. But global competition, industrialisation, urban expansion, increasing and diversifying demands of a growing world population, resource scarcity and climate change are a challenge for the sector’s prosperity. In Europe, between 2005-13, the number of farm holdings fell by 3.7% and the number of agricultural workers fell by 12.8%, indicating a long-term decline in the sector and a trend for bigger farms. Farmers, particularly SMEs, lack the infrastructure to add value to their crops themselves, resulting in them taking the smallest margins for their crops, from large companies who will process, distribute and sell them. They need innovative solutions to help them diversify, collaborate and grow.
CAPTIVATE presents such a solution, providing arable farmers the opportunity to access the growing, global craft malt market directly and empowering them to capitalise on the success of the craft beer market by creating a new craft malt market, providing a local solution from grain to glass. In addition, it will also enable farmers to grow across traditional boundaries by selling high value malt rather than low value barley directly to the end-users within the brewery, distilling and food sectors.
