Rusagro Group creates joint venture with Turkish businessman for seed production

MOSCOW. Feb 17 (Interfax) - Rusagro Group , one of the leading agricultural holdings in Russia, has created a joint venture, Solrost, with Turkish businessman Sarikurt Bedirkhan for seed production.

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, 67% of it is owned by the group's Rusagro Invest LLC, with Bedirkhan holding 33%. Solrost will cultivate grains (except rice), leguminous crops and oilseed seeds.

As reported by Kommersant, which first drew attention to this deal, Bedirkhan is associated with the foreign agricultural holding Genesis Seed & Meya Tohum.

In addition to Solrost, Bedirkhan is also a co-owner in Russia of the company Genesis AgroTrade, which is registered in the Krasnodar region. He owns 49% of the business, with 51% owned by Lands of Kuban LLC. Genesis AgroTrade is believed to be part of the Turkish agricultural holding Genesis Seed & Meya Tohum, which is engaged in seed breeding, including durum wheat, barley, lentils, chickpeas and sunflowers. According to its own data, the agricultural holding annually produces seeds on an area of around 7,000 hectares, collaborating with 200 farmers.

In 2022, Genesis Seed and the regional authorities in Bashkiria announced the creation of a project to produce hybrid sunflower seeds and other agricultural crops. Investments in the project were estimated at 142.1 million rubles.

The project with the Turkish businessman is not the first for Rusagro in the field of seed farming. In 2020, the group, together with Schelkovo Agrohim, established on a parity basis the company Soyuzsemsvekla for the production of sugar beet seeds.

Rusagro Group holds leading positions in the production of sugar, pork, fats and oils as well as agricultural products. Assets are located in 15 regions of Russia. The group includes 46 pig farms, four meat processing assets, six oil extraction plants, six fat-and-oil product manufacturing plants and nine sugar plants.

The group produced 931,000 tonnes of crude vegetable oil in 2025, down 16% compared to the previous year, 892,000 tonnes of sugar (-15%) and 571,000 tonnes of pork in live weight for slaughter (+64%), and sold 1.5 million tonnes of grain crops (+47%). Revenue increased 16% and reached 423.8 billion rubles.

According to its annual report, the company's land bank at the end of 2024 stood at 815,000 hectares, of which 704,000 hectares were arable land.