Canadian malt. American hops. Mexican water and ingenuity. All four are used in Mexico’s brewing industry, providing another example of North American economic integration — USMCA in action!
One company that plays an important role in Mexico’s dynamic craft brewing ecosystem by getting the first two of those ingredients to Mexican brewers is Beermex, which sells a range of beer inputs, but is perhaps best known as a supplier of high-quality Canadian malt.
Founded in Mérida, Yucatán, in 2018 by Eduardo Cárdenas, Beermex today has hundreds of customers, among which are some of Mexico’s most innovative and best known craft breweries.
One factor that has been crucial to the company’s success is its partnership with Canada Malting Co., a Calgary-based company that is one of Canada’s largest malting businesses.
To learn more about Beermex and its relationship with Canada Malting, I recently visited the company’s bodega, or warehouse, on the outskirts of Mérida. There, I met up with Cárdenas, an affable CEO who I soon found out is very passionate about his products and the Mexican craft beer industry.
As a home brewer, Eduardo discovered that brewing essentials such as malt and hops weren’t readily available in Mexico’s southeast. He consequently spotted a business opportunity and set out in earnest to establish his very own brewing supplies company.
As we sipped a Nebulosa 630 New England Style IPA made by Guadalajara’s Cerveza Loba and Tijuana’s Kaminari Brewing in collaboration with Beermex and State of Washington company Yakima Chief Hops, Eduardo explained that in his early days as a brewing industry entrepreneur he contacted a number of companies as he was seeking to source malt. He found Canada Malting to be the most responsive, and the best fit for his then fledgling business.
Working also with the Country Malt Group, a distributor for Canada Malting Co., Beermex imported its first batch of Canadian malt to Mexico in 2018.
In the six years since then “Canada Malting has been an amazing partner for us,” Eduardo told Mexico News Daily. “We’re really proud to sell their products in Mexico.”
Once he had “very good quality” Canadian malt in the country — as well as a range of other brewing supplies including U.S.-grown hops in pellet form and brewer’s yeast — Eduardo set about doing what many up-and-coming salespeople have to do: knock on doors and make calls.
To expand the potential market for his products, he broadened his focus beyond the southeast, and soon enough orders started to come in from the center of the country, especially from Querétaro and Mexico City, where craft breweries such as Falling Piano, Morenos and Cyprez are located.
With business on the up-and-up, Eduardo struck an alliance with United Malt — the Australia-based parent company of Canada Malting Co. — that allowed Beermex to open two additional bodegas, one in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara and another in Tijuana, Mexico’s craft beer pioneer.
With the opening of the additional warehouses, the Beermex team grew quickly to reach a total of 16 people.
Eduardo told MND that his Canadian malt shipments come into the country by train, arriving in the Jalisco municipality of Zapopan, where the Guadalajara bodega is located. He said he has found importation by rail to be very reliable, providing a first-hand account that freight transport through North America — a vital aspect of successful economic integration — is working as it should be.
He noted that he is in regular contact with Canada Malting Co., and highlighted that the company helped him come up with a solution to combat higher malt prices he had been forced to pass on to his customers. The solution was the creation of Beermex’s own malt brand, Maltima, which is produced by Canada Malting Co. but shipped in bulk to Mexico, where it is bagged.
Maltima is now Beermex’s leading malt brand, Eduardo said, explaining that it accounts for 30% of total malt sales by his company, which in addition to Canadian malt also sells malt from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.
Elaborating on his relationship with Canada Malting, he noted that he attended the company’s malting course in 2019.
The annual course, the company says on its website, “allows Canada Malting to bring brewers, distillers and other industry people out to the barley fields, grain elevators, our malting plant and more to showcase all aspects of malting.”
Eduardo described the week he spent attending the course in Calgary as “an incredible experience.”
He also said that Beermex has big plans to further promote Canadian malt in Mexico, revealing that that he hopes to collaborate with other organizations — perhaps even the Canadian Embassy in Mexico — to help Mexican brewers attend the Canada Malting course in 2025 so they can fully understand “why Canadian malt is so good.”
Beermex’s relationship with Canada Malting, and other North American companies such as Yakima Chief Hops, provides a positive example of the kind of regional integration that Mexican, Canadian and U.S. political leaders often say is crucial to both present and future economic prosperity.
Next time you have a Mexican beer — whether it’s one of the many great craft lagers or ales or one of the country’s best known mass-produced cervezas — take a moment to think about where the individual ingredients come from, and the many people who made your enjoyment of it possible: the hop growers, the hop pickers — many of whom are Mexican in Washington’s Yakima Valley — the barley producers, the distributors such as Eduardo, the rain God Tláloc and, of course, the brewers.
And remember: the beer in your bottle or glass just might be a refreshing, effervescent embodiment of North American integration. ¡Salud!
By Mexico News Daily chief staff writer Peter Davies ([email protected])
This article is part of Mexico News Daily’s “Canada in Focus” series. Read the other articles from the series here.
