Kazakhstan launches checks into Ukrainian confectionary products
KYIV/ALMATY. Aug 2 (Interfax) - Kazakhstan launched inspections of the Ukrainian confectionery corporation Roshen's products after it received an official confirmation from the Russian health and consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor that Roshen products do not comply with the Customs Union's standards, Kazakhstan's chief sanitary official Maral Rakhimzhanov said.
"Kazakhstan's sanitary inspection service has launched similar inspections to those conducted in Russia. If substandard products are found, they will be banned," he said on Channel Seven television on Thursday.
Quality checks of Roshen products, which account for about 20% of Kazakhstan's confectionary market, will last seven days, according to Channel Seven.
Channel Seven also said that experts in Pavlodar have published the first results of laboratory tests, saying that the batch of candies checked complied with the standards.
Roshen, one of Ukraine's largest confessionary companies, encompasses confectionary plants in Kyiv, Mariupol (Donetsk region) , Kremenchuk (Poltava region) and Vinnytsya, plus the dairy plant Bershadmoloko, the Litin pedigree cattle farm, both in the Vinnytsya region, as well as a Roshen factory in Lipetsk (Russia), the Klaipeda factory in Lithuania and the Bonbonetti Choco factory in Hungary.
The corporation manufactures up to 200 types of confectionary products, including chocolates, candies, marmalade, biscuits, wafers and cakes. Its annual capacity is 140,000 tonnes of confectionary products.