The court prohibited the buyer from using the property of the Duck Farms agricultural complex

“Dubrovsky” drew attention to the fact that the manager transferred the complex for use to the buyer without complying with the interim measures previously taken by the court. The company claims that poultry farming equipment is currently being set up and launched on the territory of the Duck Farms. The purchase and sale of the complex is also disputed by the Lipetsk company “Chicken Kingdom” (Lipetsk, part of the Cherkizovo group, manages assets in the Chelyabinsk region). Both companies believe that they had a right of first refusal to acquire Duck Farms due to the availability of land adjacent to the debtor's land. The deal was concluded with individual entrepreneur Kurbanjon Dzhamolov at a price of 312.6 million rubles. Duck Farms has been in receivership since February 2019 and is in debtto creditors in the amount of 1.23 billion rubles.

Downtime of the enterprise does not do anything good, since it is not clear under what conditions the equipment is preserved there, says Konstantin Korneev, executive director of the company Rincon Management. “You need to understand how protected the equipment is and whether it will be possible to use it in the future. First of all, this concerns electronics. This is a pain point for any enterprise that is being mothballed. The question is how it is protected, maintained, monitored. For the equipment to work properly, you need to maintain the temperature regime; you can’t just leave it,” the expert said. 

President of Agrifood Strategies Albert Davleev noted that duck production in Russia is going well this year. The demand for this meat has increased sharply, as the product has become more accessible, the purchasing power of the population has increased, and distribution has expanded to more regions. “This year is a good year for duck producers. We hope that in 2024 the success of this product on the market will be consolidated,” the expert said. 

According to Davleev, in Russia, industrial enterprises annually produce about 40-45 thousand tons of duck meat. Another 10 thousand tons are produced by small farms. “This year the increase in production will not be very large - around 10%. This is the maximum, perhaps production will even remain at last year’s level. This is explained by serious problems with breeding material: parent flocks for the production of hatching eggs , which were brought from Europe, have become less available,” the expert explained. According to him, communication with suppliers from Southeast Asia is now being established. “When we have enough breeding material, the market will grow. The volume of production and consumption depends solely on the availability of breeding material,” Davleev emphasized.

According to the analytical company BusinesStat, the volume of the Russian duck meat market has more than tripled in three years. In 2020, 13.7 thousand tons of this type of meat were sold, in 2021 - already 24.5 thousand tons, and in 2022 - 35.5 thousand tons. BusinesStat analysts explained such significant market growth by the fact that The chicken meat segment is approaching saturation, and consumers are increasingly interested in non-traditional types of poultry meat. In addition, in 2019, sales of duck meat in Russia decreased by more than 40% and amounted to 11.5 thousand tons, so the current growth is partly of a recovery nature.