M&A activity in Russia's agribusiness sector expected to fall in 2025 - RusAg Bank
MOSCOW. April 9 (Interfax) - Russia's animal products market has been rapidly consolidating in recent years, particularly in the meat sector, but M&A activity is expected to decline this year, the managing director of the large business department at Russian Agricultural Bank (RusAg), Ilya Shumov said on Wednesday.
"As we see, the degree of consolidation on the market is increasing. The share of the top producers in pork grew from 76% to almost 80% of commercial production from 2022 through 2024. Similar trends in the growth of players' shares are being seen in other areas as well. In broilers, for example, the share of the top 20 producers grew from 64% to 70%," Shumov said at the Agroinvestor: PRO Livestock Farming and Feed conference in Moscow.
There was also high activity among table egg producers, foremost because of the Tavros Group's acquisition of four businesses in this period, he said. This increased the top producers' market share to 31% from 27%.
The dairy farming market remains the least consolidated, with the market share of the top ten raw milk producers edging up from 7.9% in 2022 to 8.15% in 2024, Shumov said.
This year, given high interest rates, in the baseline scenario "one should expect a decrease in M&A activity in the agribusiness sector in general, including in livestock farming," he said.
"The key buyers on the market will be the same large agribusiness groups, the very same Cherkizovo , Resource Group, Tavros. One should also not rule out, for example, the sale of companies transferred to the Federal Property Agency, such as Ariant. We see that all these assets are sold on the market sooner or later," Shumov said.
However, he did not rule out the acceleration of consolidation in dairy farming. "We see that there is some interest in such assets on the market. One should actually expect a revival of the M&A market in dairy farming," Shumov said.
His presentation said that 19 deals worth $240 million were made in the agribusiness sector in 2022, 10 deals worth $330 million were made in 2023 and 14 deals worth $690 million were made in 2024. The largest deals last year included Rusagro Group's acquisition of AgroBelogorye, AFG National's acquisition of beef producer Zarechnoye, and Cherkizovo Group's acquisition of Ruskom.
