Building a Sustainable and Secure Malted Barley Supply Chain

Proximity Malt was built on the premise of building a secure, sustainable supply chain.  Dale West, our CEO, often states when talking about our commitment to improving the barley-to-brewer supply chain, “We knew that there was a better mousetrap.  The traditional malted barley supply chain- with touchpoints at ports, train yards, and truck depots has so much cost tied up in logistics, not to mention today’s currency and political risks”.  Proximity’s answer was to build two new, high-tech malthouses.  These are efficiently located at the nexus of underutilized barley and a density of potential customers.

Using regional barley: 

Barley costs and logistics were key to our approach of building a sustainable and secure supply chain.  We planned to source 75% of our raw materials within 150 miles of our malthouses.  We did it!

Summarizing our local barley supply chain for 2023, we can show the following distances traveled for barley:

                          Laurel, DE barley footprint                                        Monte Vista, CO barley footprint

 Using regional barley gives us several advantages:

By streamlining our supply chain, we gain significant systemic advantages that enhance resiliency.  This will enable us to respond more effectively to our customers:

• Reduced lead times: scheduling in barley to meet our production schedules from local producers
• Lower logistics costs: actual and also reduce the complexity of managing and planning
• Sustainable supply: lower miles traveled lead to reduced GHGe and carbon usage
• Risk Mitigation: less vulnerable to supply chain disruptions, less vulnerable to political risk and uncertainty

Locally available winter varieties for our Delaware malthouse have truly changed the game for our customers. Winter-planted barley and wheat varieties remove miles of inbound transportation, and are also very beneficial in our quest for a more sustainable world.  Winter grains allow the growers to increase soil health by increasing the amount of organic matter in the soil, sequestering carbon in the soil, decreasing soil erosion, and helping mitigate agrochemical leaching in the water systems.  You can learn more about winter grains and their role in regenerative agriculture on our website

What does this mean for our customers:

Because we have a shorter supply chain and less complexity in our system, customers will find that we can manage our inventory more efficiently.  This results in less out of stocks in the course of our business.  Another benefit is shorter transit times for our customers.

Our name, Proximity, embodies our core value of cost and resource efficiency.  We bring our supply chain closer to our customers.  This, in turn, keeps the economic value within a regional community.  It’s important to us that every dollar of malt sold contributes directly to the farmers in the region.  They in turn spend the money in their communities, strengthening rural economies.  We are working closely with our farmers to improve soil and use fewer resources to deliver malt to your brewery.  This will benefit not only the local economy, but also the environment, and ultimately our world.

Go to our Contact Us page on our website to find your local sales representative.  We would love discuss how Proximity can become your advantage.