OREANDA-NEWS. Kuban Agroholding, one of Russia's largest agribusinesses and part of Basic Element industrial group, launched an 8,400-ton slaughterhouse and a 50,000 head hog farm in Krasnodar region. Over 2.6 billion rubles (USD 40 million) was invested to the projects.

The launch of the slaughterhouse and the hog farm marks a new stage of the company's development as Kuban Agro has entered agricultural processing market and began manufacturing high-value products. Both facilities will increase profitability of the company's animal breeding division and strengthen Kuban Agro's position in industrial pig farming.

The slaughterhouse and the hog farm are already operational and will reach estimated capacity in May 2015.

Slaughterhouse's characteristics

The slaughterhouse with an annual capacity of 8,400 tons of meat, focuses on livestock primary processing. This includes slaughtering of cattle, carcass cooling, meat cutting and packaging.

A combined slaughter line's capacity is 27 tons of bone-in meat per 8-hour shift (500 hog heads or 120 cattle heads), cooling capacity is 75 tons of chilled meat and 250 tons of frozen meat, cutting and packing capacity is 12.5 tons.

Based on the average national meat consumption of 75 kg per person annually, the complex is capable of feeding a small town of 100,000 residents with meat for one year.

The slaughterhouse is kitted out with equipment produced by Bertsch-Laska, a leading Austrian supplier for food industry businesses. A technological line for the factory was developed by the leading Russian and European project bureaus, Falkenstein and Libner.

With its own strong resource base, Kuban's slaughterhouse has 40% of raw materials supplied by the company's hog farm.

Hog farm's characteristics

The hog farm and the slaughterhouse make up a single production complex. It was designed to house and maintain 2,200 sows and brawn 50,000 hog heads with an annual capacity of 5,900 tons of live meat weight.

The farm operates using the technologies and equipment of the French company I-TEK which have proved successful when applied to similar projects in Russia's Belgorod and Ryazan regions.

As a fully automated facility, the hog farm boasts separated protected areas for fodder delivery, independent lines for supplying mixed fodder to all the units of the facility and its own area for production of mixed pig feed.

All the technologies mentioned above ensured the highest level of protection against African swine fever. On top of that, the hog farm features three independent disinfectant barriers, equipment for sanitation of clothes and shoes. The farm's employees wear uniform of different colors that match the facility's units. Each employee has an electronic chip sewn in the uniform that blocks access to the unit which the employee is not authorized to visit.

It took two years to complete the construction of the slaughterhouse and the hog farm. Both facilities will create 200 new jobs.

Kuban Agro's plans for 2015 include a launch of the sausage manufacturing room at the slaughterhouse that will focus on the production of meat for HoReCa market, retail chains and final consumers.

Andrey Oleynik, managing director of Basic Element's agribusiness and the chairman of the board of Kuban Agro:

"Food import ban introduced by Russia, creates opportunities for Russian producers who can occupy new markets. However a low investment activity in Russia's agricultural industry together with dilapidated technology and high credit rates hinder the whole sector. Animal husbandry that traditionally has a long payback period, is one of the most troubled areas. Following Russian Central Bank's move to increase benchmark rate to 17% in 2014, commercial banks raised interest rates both for new and current loans. In early 2014, credit rate for the construction of the slaughterhouse and the hog farm was at 14% while in late 2014 it skyrocketed to 22-27%"