Cherkizovo announces huge pig breeding project

The project follows a recent agreement between Cherkizovo’s management and the regional government and the project is expected to be up and running by 2017. 

The farms will house 280,000 pigs. The second stage of the project, from 2017-2019, could involve the construction of five additional farms, which would bring this figure to 500,000 pigs. According to Cherkizovo founder and chairman of the board Igor Babaev, the Penza Oblast has been chosen because the company already has all the necessary infrastructure in place.  

The company owns around 100,000 hectares of agricultural land in the region and already operates pig farms housing 100,000 pigs, as well as a major meat processing plant. Babaev explained that one of the main targets of the new project was to bring more raw materials from the region to the local processing plant.

Production efficiency​

“The entire infrastructure has already been created in the region,​ “At the moment, we are taking pigs from the Voronezh, Lipetsk and Tambov Oblasts to the meat processing plant in Penza Oblast. But from a production efficiency standpoint, this is wrong. We need to locate the breeding ​[facilities] for the production of live pigs at a maximum radius of 100km from the processing plant.​”

The investment deal stipulates that the government of the region will provide full support and all possible assistance to the project, but what this support will encompass is still unknown. 

“In the Penza region seven pig farms with a capacity of 280,000 pigs per year will be built. We are all aware that this will give fresh impetus to the development of agriculture in the Penza Oblast, as well as creating jobs and a tax base​,” said Penza Oblast governor Ivan Belozertsev.

Significant investment​

The project will be an important part of the company’s development strategy, which includes significant investment in the new production capacity in the next few years. 

“Today, we are proud to announce that, next year, we will get closer to producing a figure of 1 million tonnes (t) of meat annually​,” added Babaev. “This figure deserves attention, as it describes the company’s overall capacity. It includes 500,000t of poultry meat and we plan to increase the volumes of pork produced to 350,000t–400,000t, as well as ​[continuing to develop] our meat processing​.” 

Earlier, this year Cherkizovo announced an investment of 14.4bn rubles ($336m) in the creation of a huge pig facility in the Voronezh and Lipetsk Oblasts to produce 145,000t of pork products per year. It is expected that these two projects will enable the company to bring its overall pork product capacity to 400,000t within the next few years.