Razgulay to boost crop yields over next five years
MOSCOW. July 11 (Interfax) - Razgulay Group , one of Russia's leading agro-holdings, plans to boost its crop yields for sugar beet, grain and rice significantly over the next five years the company said in its annual financial reporting.
The report said that the sugar beet yield should increase from 32.04 tonnes per hectare for this year to 36.25 tonnes in 2016, winter wheat - from 3.23 tonnes to 3.65 tonnes and rice - from 6.44 tonnes to 7.29 tonnes, respectively.
The sales revenue from the company's sub-holding engaged in storing processed grain, decreased to 10.195 billion rubles for 2010 from 17.044 billion rubles as posted for the previous year. At the same time, Razgulay's agrarian sub-holding (which raises crops), boosted sales revenue to 7.155 billion rubles for 2010 from 6.408 billion rubles, sugar - to 13.957 billion rubles from 10.61 billion rubles.
The EBITDA for Razgulay's grain division increased from 657 million rubles in 2009 to 893 million rubles for 2010, agrarian divisions - from 616 million rubles to 1.548 billion rubles and sugar - 2.17 billion rubles to 2.654 billion rubles.
The holding' sales revenue came to 24 billion overall for 2010 compared to 30.2 billion rubles for 2009. The EBITDA margin stood at 18% compared to 10% a year previous. The company's debt to EBITDA rate dropped from 8.5 in 2009 to 5.8 in 2010. Administrative expenditures went down by 20% to 1.9 billion rubles from 2.3 billion rubles in 2009.
Razgulay is a major Russian agribusiness group that includes farming, grain and sugar divisions. The holding has 12 elevators, seven flour mills, three mills for processing groats and a dairy plant. It also controls 460,000 hectares of farmland, including 338,000 under cultivation in 2011.
Razgulay has capacity to process 4 million tonnes of sugar beets and 1.4 million tonnes of raw sugar a year at 10 sugar refineries in Krasnodar territory, the Belgorod, Kursk and Orlov regions and Bashkortostan and Karachaevo-Cherkessia.
Avangard Asset Management acquired 21.42% of Razgulay shares in October 2010 from group founder and president Igor Potapenko, whose own stake fell to 25.29%.