The Malterie du Château stops on 31 December, ten months after Gembloux. From 1 January there will be one maltings left in Wallonia — ours, starting in November. What a region loses, and what a five-tonne drum can and cannot replace.
On 31 December the kilns at Belœil go cold. The Malterie du Château, founded in 1868 and the oldest maltings still working in Belgium, will stop production: the management of the Soufflet group, its owner since 2023, announced the decision in early October, as reported by RTBF and L'Avenir. Twenty-six people, at Belœil and Ghlin, are affected. Ten months earlier, Boortmalt had confirmed the permanent closure of its Gembloux plant, idle for a year. From 1 January 2027 there will be exactly one maltings left in Wallonia. It starts up in November, in Dinant, and it is ours. We would have preferred to write this piece under different circumstances.
What is closing at Belœil
A hundred and fifty-eight years of craft. Belœil was not an ordinary maltings. It had specialised in coloured malts — roasted, caramelised, smoked — and offered around a hundred varieties, 95% of them exported to more than 140 countries and some 3,500 breweries, according to the figures quoted in the regional press. Small by the standards of the industry, but known to brewers who have never set foot in Hainaut.
The reasons given. Beer consumption has been falling since 2023, the equipment is ageing, and turnover has declined since the takeover. Beer.be puts it more bluntly: the group never invested in its Belgian sites and prefers to concentrate production in France. The municipality of Belœil, for its part, has pointed out that the environmental permit, renewed in December 2024, ran until 2044. It was not the administration that shut the door.
And before that, Gembloux. Boortmalt's Gembloux site, home of the Belgomalt brand, had been mothballed for close to a year when the group confirmed its permanent closure in December 2025, in a statement on capacity adjustments. Same reason: less beer drunk, less malt needed. Two closures in twelve months, for two reasons that have nothing local about them.
What a region loses with its maltings
Not the tonnage. Let us be honest: Belgium will not run short of malt. Antwerp is home to one of the largest maltings in the world, and the lorries from Lille, Rotterdam or Cologne are not far away. A brewer who buys pils malt by the pallet will find a supplier in a morning, probably at the same price.
Proximity, on the other hand, cannot be replaced. The Les Carrières brewery in Basècles and Les Légendes in Irchonwelz bought their malt a few kilometres away, L'Avenir reports. That means dropping by to see the kiln, asking for a shade more colour on a caramel malt, collecting a sack on a Friday afternoon, talking through a batch that behaved oddly in the mash tun. A maltster you can speak to is an ingredient in the recipe as much as the barley is. Several brewers say they were told nothing.
A buyer for the malting barley grown here. A maltings is also a customer. Belgomalt had built a "Pure Local" programme that paid farmers around Gembloux to grow malting barley under a specification. When the plant closes, the barley keeps growing, but it leaves on a lorry. For a Belgian brewing supply chain trying to rebuild itself from field to glass, it is the middle link that goes, once again.
The trade itself. Kilning a caramel malt to the right colour, roasting without burning: that is learned in a kiln, not in a book. Some of the twenty-six people at Belœil will be offered posts in France, Beer.be writes. The know-how will not vanish; it will change country.
A five-tonne maltings does not replace Belœil
Let us say it before anyone says it for us. MAD is not the successor to the Malterie du Château. We start in November with a five-tonne germination-kilning drum, roughly one batch a week, and base malts — pils, pale ale — alongside a few munich, vienna and Belgian-style malts. No roasted malt, no caramel, no catalogue of a hundred references. A brewer who bought coloured malts at Belœil will have to look elsewhere, and we will tell them so plainly.
We do not ship to the world. Belœil exported almost everything. We deliver to Belgium and its immediate neighbours — France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg — and that is deliberate. Malt is heavy, margins are thin, and sending a tonne of it across Europe was never the plan.
We exist for a different reason. MAD was designed to do precisely what a large maltings does not: malt organic Belgian barley, part of it from our own farm, in a short supply chain, and dry it without fossil fuels — kilning heat from a biomass boiler, renewable electricity, steeping water recovered and reused. A five-tonne batch is the size of one lorry, and it is the size at which you can tell a brewer which field their malt came from.
What changes for brewers in Wallonia
From January, the nearest malt comes from Dinant. For a brewer in Namur, Charleroi or Belgian Luxembourg, that is new. For a brewer in western Hainaut who is losing Belœil, we are a hundred kilometres away and we do not make the same malts. We will not pretend that is good news for them.
The question raised at Libramont this summer is back. Can you brew Belgian from field to glass? With two maltings gone, the answer is harder than it was a year ago, and it now rests on a single drum. That is a responsibility we did not ask for, but one we take seriously: produce steadily, at consistent quality, and stay reachable.
When local malt is not the right choice. A brewer whose recipes depend on one specific roasted malt, a brewer who needs twenty tonnes a month, a brewer who wants the lowest price: for them, Dinant will not be the right address, and it is better to know that before ordering.
For those losing their maltster
If you brew and Belœil was your maltings, come and see ours before it runs. The drum is in place, the steeping vessel too, and the malthouse team will take the time to go through your recipes and tell you, malt by malt, what we can do and what we cannot. You will find us in Dinant, and at mad.be.