21 Dec 2009 17:10

Atria, AS Dan Invest putting 40 mln euros into new Russian hog complexes

MOSCOW. Dec 21 (Interfax) - Atria of Finland and AS Dan Invest of Denmark plan to invest 40 million euros in the building of two hog-farming complexes in the Krasnodar territory and Tambov region, chair of the AS Dan Invest board of directors Kent Skaanning told Interfax.

Atria has inked an agreement with AS Dan Invest on the acquisition of 26% of the charter capital of the Danish company's Russian subsidiary LLC Dan-Invest, which builds and manages hog-farming complexes. Payment for the stake will be in the form of Atria's involvement in financing the hog complexes, Skaanning said.

The plan is that a large part of the project investment will come from Dan Invest. Bank loans will be raised to pay for the Krasnodar territory project.

The hog farms will be set up to take advantage of already existing capacity. The first hogs are slated to arrive at the one in Krasnodar territory in Q1 2010. When the complex is operating at fully capacity, it will be able to produce around 180,000 hogs annually.

Atria already has a hog complex in the Moscow region able to produce 55,000 hogs a year. A company representative told Interfax that the new farms enterprises will produce useful materials for Atria's own processing needs.

"Atria today has a meatpacking enterprise, so for us the opportunity to have our own raw-materials base is very important," he said. Some of the meat will retail in the form of refrigerated packaged products.

Atria Group, one of the biggest Scandinavian meat-product makers, had invested more than 150 million euros in Russia by the end of 2008. Its first acquisition in Russia was the St. Petersburg-based Pit-Product in 2005. In July of 2008, Atria bought the Moscow meatpacking plant Kampomos from Spain's Campofrio Alimentacion S.A. for 75 million euros.