Crisis has not stopped Russian pig investments

01-06-2010 | Home | Article

The annual exhibition Kombikorma, for grains and feed, took place in Moscow, Russia, 2-5 February. The crisis only seems to have postponed pig investments.

By Philippe Caldier
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The Kombikorma exhibition took place in the All Exhibitions Center in Moscow.

With 285 exhibitors coming from 22 countries from all over the world, the Kombikorma exhibition in Moscow,

Russia, was a good place to measure the impact of the crisis which affected Russia in 2009 as with many other countries. The crisis has not stopped the wave of investments forecasted or in process, but it has only postponed them.

For many exhibitors in Moscow, the crisis is over and for some it is just like it did not exist at all. Almost all feed or premix producers forecast to build new plants somewhere in Russia in 2010 in order to answer to the growing demand of the market. For instance, in the Belgorod region, two giant producers have 1 million pigs together, with still projects of investments to increase their size. Poultry and pigs are the winners in Russia with amazing growth statistics. According to V.M. Kojebnikov, editor of Svinovodstvo magazine, pig production has increased by 480,000 tonnes (+32%) between 2006 and 2008, and the number of head by 1.1 million (+7%). In 2009, pig production still increased by 9% and the number of pigs by 5%. “In the country we have 130 major pig projects for 200 billion roubles of investments with the support of the national programme for development of Russian livestock,” Kojebnikov is quoted from the January issue. All these projects will bring 1.5 million tonnes more pig meat (liveweight). In the same issue, Svinovodstvo publishes the annual ranking of the 100 best Russian pig companies regarding their pig numbers, pig production and profitability (See Table 1). Two remarks can be made regarding this classification: 21 companies out of 100 are from Belgorod region which seems a paradise for pigs, close to the Ukrainian border. Three winners out of ten are from Siberia: the two first places with Omskii Bacon and ZAO “Agrarnaya Groupa”.

Investment size

“The size of the investments in pigs is huge with 10,000 sows and 150,000 pigs,” says Mikhail Shkatov, pig specialist for Koudijs Mkorma, the distributor of Dutch animal nutrition company De Heus in Russia. Last year, the company bought a premix company in the Vladimir region.

In 2010, the Russian poultry production is expected to grow by 300,000 tonnes and, according to Tigran Papazyan, director of Alltech, Russia will be self-sufficient soon in poultry meat and is even able to become a net exporter in a short term. It remains to be seen if Russian pork will follow that same path. PP

Source: Pig Progress Magazine Volume 26, No. 2