Progress Agro plans to enter the Asian market

The company can EXPORT pig products that are not in demand in RUSSIA

The Yuzhny MEAT Processing Plant (part of the Progress Agro agricultural holding, previously called Kuban, founded by Oleg Deripaska) plans to start exporting meat products. Nikolai Shamukhin, DIRECTOR of the enterprise, spoke about this at the Russian Meat & Feed Industry conference of Agroinvestor. “First of all, on foreign markets, in particular, in the countries of Southeast Asia, you can sell products that are not very popular in Russia: pork legs, ears, tails,” he specified. Now the company is conducting audits, preparing the missing documents and is likely to enter the Asian market soon.

According to Shamukhin, the previous year was difficult for the company, primarily due to the pandemic and increased production costs. “There has been and still remains an urgent problem of rising prices for raw materials, while selling prices for finished products, in particular, semi-finished products, we do not raise for our customers,” he stressed. In order to minimize the increase in costs, the company works on a lean manufacturing system.

In 2020, in the south of Russia, where the meat processing plant sells its products mainly through large federal networks and supplies to the HoReCa segment on the coast, demand for semi-finished products and barbecue products has fallen, Shamukhin noted. “Last year, people were apprehensive about driving south, the season started later than usual, and that had a big impact on our sales. As a result, we had to change the strategy and move to a different segment and format of production,” said the HEAD of Yuzhny. During the pandemic, the company also tried to develop the online sales format, but it did not gain popularity, perhaps due to the fact that consumers in the South are only looking at it. The company is not going to supply products to other regions yet, although there are prerequisites for this, Shamukhin added.

Yuzhny also plans to develop the production of sausages. Since this year, the meat processing plant has expanded the volume and range of production of these products. Now the production of sausages is the most promising, Shamukhin believes. With the same meat, due to the timing of sales, it is not always possible to enter the network sales markets, while sausage products have longer sales periods, and retailers are more willing to take them. “Of course, competition in the sausage segment is very tough, and it will be difficult for us to compete with federal players. However, we hope to win our customers, who appreciate the naturalness and quality of products,” said the head of the enterprise.

The Yuzhny Meat Processing Plant is part of the Progress Agro group of companies, the main activities of which are crop production, animal husbandry, grain processing and storage, SUGAR, MILK and meat production. The structure of the holding includes eight farms for the production of marketable milk, a meat processing complex, two pig-breeding mega-farms, grain elevators, a corn research and breeding center, a plant for the production and processing of seeds, a sugar factory and a stud farm. The land bank of the company is 112 thousand hectares.