Russia Baltic Pork Invest, a subsidiary of CP Foods in Russia, considers building a 5th pig farm in the Nizhny Novgorod region in Central Russia.
The company has already built 2 pig farms in the region designed for 180,000 head of pigs each and currently has 2 farms of a similar design under construction. The region’s agricultural minister Nikolai Denisov now explained that a pig farm similar to those already built in the region is planned to be constructed in 2024-2025.
In addition, RBPI has recently bought a grain storage in Nizhny Novgorod region with a capacity of 130,000 tonnes of grain. The grain storage capacities are expanded to meet RBPI’s growing demand to feedstuffs. The company plans to sell grain at the public market at least until the new pig farms are ready.
Denisov said, “RBPI produces about 60,000 tonnes of grain in the Nizhny Novgorod region, which is used as feedstuff at the 2 already running pig farms. Another 60,000 tonnes can be poured into the grain storage by other farmers, to sell it later at higher prices.”
CP Foods is working hard to expand its footprint in Russia. Early September, CP Foods disclosed plans aims to purchase APK Don, the Russian subsidiary of German meat producer Tönnies, for 22 billion roubles (US$ 290 million). That takeover is expected to be closed in January of 2022.
Read more details about the Tönnies-CP Foods take-over
Russian news outlet RuGrad citing its own sources in the Russian meat industry, reported that CP Foods intended to heavily invest in capacity expansion in the Russian market in case if the takeover is approved by the Russian antimonopoly watchdog. Details of those expansion plans, however, have remained unknown.
CP Foods is currently Russia’s 9th largest pig producer, with a 2.6% share of the Russian pork production or 129,200 tonnes.
Russia’s pork production is set for rapid growth in the next few years due to projects embarked on by the top-20 largest producers, the Russian Union of Pork Producers (RUPP) forecasted. Russia is expected to boost pork production by 200,000 tonnes in live weight in 2021 and by 450,000 tonnes in 2022, RUPP estimated.
CP Foods has also been expanding its poultry business in Russia. The company invested 4.5 billion roubles ($ 65 million) into the modernisation of Severnaya and Voiskovitshya poultry farms in Leningrad region to boost broiler production by 10% to 275,000 tonnes per year since 2022. The idea would be of CP Foods to export extra quantities to China.