Thai agribusiness giant Charoen Pokphand has gained approval for its intended plans to further expand in the Russian pork business.
The plans, announced in summer 2013, include a purchase of an additional 67% of the Norwegian company Russia Baltic Pork Invest (RBPI). This company is involved in the production and sale of pork in Russia. CPF already owned 16.3% of the shares, so total percentage would be 83.3%.
The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service announced recently that the ‘Thai company has the right to increase its stake in Russian business’, according to Russia’s press agency Itar-Tass.
It is assumed that within a deal the company will purchase 822,191 thousand shares of RBPI, paying about US$95.5 million (€72.2 million).
RBPI has been involved in pork production projects like JSC Pravdinskoye Svinoproizvodstvo in the Kaliningrad region; NNPP pig farms in the Nizhny Novgorod region, and Penza Agri Invest in the Penza region.
The Norwegian company will continue to operate after the acquisition. RBPI currently produces about 180,000 tonnes of live pigs per year with a turnover of about US$47 million, about 1.5 billion Russian roubles.
By 2018 Russia Baltic Pork Invest intends to take 6% of Russian pork market. The Norwegian group plans to invest up to 2015 about US$170 million (5.4 billion roubles) in the construction of three enterprises for pigs production as part of the expansion programme.
RBPI also intends to build seven new farms between 2015 and 2018.