As China halts imports, India's craft beer craze may rescue Aussie barley

With India's population growing by 15 million per year, the industry will need to make an additional 2 million hectoliters between 2019-24 -- or 80 Olympic swimming pools worth, Bloomberg Intelligence

Australian barley growers could soon be raising a glass to India’s swelling cohort of beer drinkers, who are being eyed as a potential market for some of the country’s excess stocks of the grain, after its biggest buyer China all but halted imports this year.

While India’s beer market was only worth about $7.4 billion last year -- a fraction of the U.S.’s $105.4 trillion market, according to Euromonitor research -- the sheer pace of population growth there, coupled with an increasing thirst for craft beer among younger and wealthier cohorts, means it has the potential to grow into one of