1 Oct 2024 16:00

Lisin cos reportedly acquire baby food maker Progress

MOSCOW. Oct 1 (Interfax) - Companies controlled by the billionaire owner of Russian steelmaker NLMK , Vladimir Lisin, may have acquired JSC Progress, a leading Russian baby food producer, national daily Kommersant reported on Tuesday, citing Telegram channel M&A Novosti.

This information was also confirmed by two sources familiar with the situation, the paper said. Representatives of Progress and Lisin did not respond to questions before publication, the paper said.

Progress, founded in 1988, has a plant in Lipetsk with capacity to produce 2 billion cartons per year of products such as baby food, juice, vegetable and fruit puree and so on.

The company bought juice producer Lebedyansky in 2001 and subsequently sold this juice business to PepsiCo Inc. for $1.4 billion in 2008. But JSC Progress was not included in this deal. This business was started independently by former Lebedyansky owners Olga Belyavtseva and Nikolai and Yury Bortsov.

After the death of the Bortsovs, their stakes in Progress were inherited by Nina and Svetlana Bortsov. At the end of 2023, they and Belyavtseva each controlled more than 25% of Progress through JSC Progress Capital.

Dairy industry association Soyuzmoloko estimates that Progress has a 10-12% share of Russia's retail market for children's dairy products, making it the third largest player.

Walnut Capital managing director Artem Motorny estimated the company's market value at 80 billion-85 billion rubles.

Progress closed 2023 with net profit down 21.8% to 6.4 billion rubles on revenue up 14.7% to almost 38 billion rubles.

Lisin is ranked third on the Forbes list of Russian billionaires, with a fortune of $26.6 billion. His main business is NLMK. He has consolidated his agricultural assets in Rumelko Group, which now includes dairy farms in Tver and Kaluga regions and Altai Territory with combined capacity to produce 180,000 tonnes of milk per year and a crop farming division with 65,000 hectares of land.