New Zealand's Fonterra to exit Russian businesses

MOSCOW. March 21 (Interfax) - Fonterra Cooperative Group Ltd. has decided to exit its business in Russia, the New Zealand dairy producer announced.

The announcement follows Fonterra's decision to suspend shipments of products to Russia at the end of February.

"Following careful consideration of the impact on our people and our long-term plans for the Russian market, we will now close our office in Moscow, re-deploying staff where possible, and withdraw from our joint venture Unifood," Fonterra CEO Miles Hurrel was quoted as saying in the press release.

Fonterra exports a small amount of product to Russia, primarily butter, totalling about 1% of its annual exports, the press release said.

New Zealand has been exporting butter to Russia for more than 40 years. Fonterra entered the joint venture Unifood in December 2018.

The joint venture's website said that its production facility in St. Petersburg has a cheese cutting and packaging department and a butter processing and packaging division. The venture closed 2020 with a net profit of 83.8 million rubles on revenue of 2.4 billion rubles, compared to 1.5 billion rubles and 137.9 million rubles, respectively, in 2019, the SPARK-Interfax system showed.