German coffee co Tchibo exits Russian business

MOSCOW. Aug 12 (Interfax) - Germany's Tchibo GmbH, one of the world's largest coffee producers, has pulled out of its Russian business, Tchibo CIS.

The company's principal owner now is MVK, which belongs to its CEO Mikhail Kovalevsky, data from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities showed. Its stake is held as collateral by Tchibo GmbH.

National daily Kommersant, citing a source familiar with the situation, reported on Friday that Tchibo CIS will retain the rights to the Tchibo and Davidoff coffee brands until the end of 2022, after which it will have to develop its own brand. One of the current options under consideration is the brand name Gold. Tchibo CIS's email is already using the gold-coffee domain.

Tchibo CIS produces coffee under contract at the Grand-NN factory in Nizhny Novgorod Region and imported part of its products from Tchibo GmbH operations in other countries. The Russian company reported that sales of locally produced products accounted for more than 70% of the business in 2020.

Market insiders cited by the paper said Tchibo has a 2.6% share of the Russian coffee market by volume and 1.6% by value.

The company's net profit fell to 103.6 million rubles in 2021 from 119.9 million rubles in 2020, while revenue rose to 3.186 billion rubles from 2.987 billion rubles.