11 Nov 2024 12:28

Resource Agribusiness Group mulls poultry processing projects in Africa

MOSCOW. Nov 11 (Interfax) - Resource Agribusiness Group, one of Russia's largest broiler producers, is considering setting up poultry dressing and processing in Africa, the group's senior vice president, Dmitry Antonov said.

"We're prepared to consider production projects in African countries to dress and process poultry meat. We've already begun this work," Antonov said in a panel discussion during the first ministerial conference at the Russia-Africa partnership forum in Sochi on Saturday.

He said this refers to producing ready to eat and ready to cook products. South Africa, Angola and several other countries are the most promising in this regard, he added.

"We held very substantive negotiations with Afreximbank as part of the working group of the EAEU business council and agreed that there is a real possibility for financing this activity and that the market does indeed need teams that are in principal mentally and physically capable of carrying out these projects together with our African partners," Antonov said.

However, the company does not currently see any "actually doable projects to produce poultry meat" with African countries, he said.

Resource Group has been exporting poultry meat to Egypt, Congo, Liberia, Ghana, Tanzania, Angola, Mozambique and ten other African countries for the past 10 years, Antonov said. Russian poultry farmers in general have access to the markets of 18 African countries.

Resource Group is ranked Russia's leading broiler meat producer by the National Poultry Union, with chicken production (in live weight) of 1.045 million tonnes in 2023, up from 1.003 million tonnes in 2022. Cherkizovo Group , which is ranked second, increased production to 986,000 tonnes from 846,000 tonnes a year earlier.

Resource Group exported 145,000 tonnes of poultry meat in 2023. The group has almost 300,000 hectares of land and production facilities in several of Russia's federal districts.