In a statement on its website on 24 October, Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) revealed it had authorised Cherkizovo to buy a stake in GK Samson, a major supplier of branded meat products in the north west of European Russia.
In a statement on its website, Cherkizovo explained that the aim of the acquisition was to strengthen its position in the meat markets of St Petersburg and the north-west federal district of Russia.
Cherkizovo’s launched its brands into the regional market in 2017 and these now account for 29% sales of branded chicken products, 53% sales of branded turkey products and 8% of branded beef products in the area, the company claimed.
The acquisition would expand the company’s range of the high-added-value products, said Sergey Mikhailov, general director of Cherkizovo. This, it said, was in line with the company’s general strategy, as Cherkizovo aimed to increase its share of revenue from selling such products to 80% in 2020, compared to only 60% now.
The Russian meat giant also hoped to promote meat products under GK Samson’s brands in these new markets. To date, GK Samson has been selling 90% of its products in St Petersburg, Cherkizovo said.
New poultry farms
Meanwhile, earlier this month, Cherkizovo filed an application with the FAS to acquire several production sites from Krasnoyaruzhskiy Broiler, a subsidiary of the Russia’s third-largest poultry producer Prioskolie. The broiler firm operates several poultry farms designed for 500,000 laying hens, with a production capacity of 80 million hatching eggs a year.
By purchasing Krasnoyaruzhskiy Broiler, Cherkizovo would increase its annual hatching egg production by nearly 30% to 300 million eggs, a source in the company told Russian newspaper Vedomosti. As a result, Cherkizovo would not only become self-sufficient in hatching eggs, but would also be able to sell them to third parties, he added.
Cherkizovo is growing its business and this is why it has also been in negotiations to acquire Altai Broiler from Prioskolie since earlier this year, he noted.
On its website earlier this year, Cherkizovo revealed that, by acquiring Altai, it hoped to expand operations in the Siberian market. Altai Broiler has a production capacity of 67,000 tonnes of broiler meat a year and is one of the biggest poultry meat companies in the Siberia and Altai regions.
Natalia Novopashina, an official spokesperson for Cherkizovo, told GlobalMeatNews that negotiations on the Altai deal were still in progress.
