KTZ president buys controlling stake in BioPark
CHEBOKSARY. July 28 (Interfax) - KTZ Tractor Plants President Mikhail Bolotin has acquired control over the BioPark project to produce lysine and protein and vitamin supplements for livestock and poultry.
"Bolotin has bought the controlling stake in BioPark. I have already met with him and he has had a look at the place. He plans to develop this as a biologist, which it turns out was his first area of study. He has a technical knowledge of all this," Chuvashia President Mikhail Ignatyev said at a press conference Wednesday.
Chuvashia has created infrastructure for the project - gas and roads, he said. "All this exists and it all suits him [Bolotin]. I cannot say how stable it will be in the future," he said.
Roslysine Netherlands launched a pilot plant for the production of crystalline lysine and protein supplements (BioPark project) in Chuvashia's Shumerlya district in December 2008. Investment totaled 8 million euros at that stage, Natalia Tomilinoi, the project's financial manager said.
Initial annual production volume was planned at 27,000 tonnes of lysine and that was to increase to 40,700 tonnes over the next six years thanks to increased productivity.
The project is based on new technology that enables lysine to be produced from fodder grain, while lysine is produced from genetically modified soya around the world.
The project would initially see production of lysine and protein and vitamin supplements for livestock and poultry and later include production of bioethanol, antibiotics, fungal biomass and fungal enzymes. The project is to be completed by 2018.
Roslysine Netherlands sold the project to ChuvashAgroBio in 2010 because it did not have enough money to continue with it. The government of Chuvashia said in February 2011 that it planned to pull out of the project and return the local and federal funds invested in it. ChuvashAgroBio Director Leonid Krasnov told Interfax at the time that the company had found a new investor - RosProdImport, which was ready to invest 6 billion rubles with the participation of VEB.
The initial project needed a review because the investor was counting on capacity of 50,000 tonnes of lysine per year, instead of the 20,000 envisaged earlier, he said.
ChuvashAgroBio and Sberbank had reached a preliminary loan agreement. "There was talk of a 350 million ruble loan," Krasnov said.