Russia: OOO Nevsky Bereg, controlled by Breweries Supply International (BSI), is to invest about EUR 35 million in building a malting plant in St. Petersburg, Delovoy Petersburg posted on March 24. According to the government decision from March 9 2004 the company was handed a land with mooring complex in the Nevsky district of the city. Its area comes to about 87 thousand m2. German company Buhler will supply the new plant with equipment through leasing scheme. Foreign barley is supposed to be used as raw material.

It is expected the production capacity of the plant to reach 105 thousand tonnes of malt per annum by 2005. However, according to experts’ estimate, production volumes will come to 200 thousand tonnes of malt per year and the investments to $ 100 million. Financing will be realized from the own funds of Breweries Supply International (BSI Group) and from the credits of a Russian bank, which name was not revealed. BSI is the main owner of OOO Nevsky Bereg and has been activating for ten years on Russian market in supplying foreign malt and barley to Russian brewers. According to BSI, the new plant will allow to decrease the volumes of imported grains and to lower the expenses of brewers on raw materials. BSI also said that it owns another small malting plant, however the spokesman didn’t revealed its location.

“Building malting plants in St. Petersburg was reasonable several years ago, what Baltika did together with Groupe Soufflet, investing US$ 50 million. 30% of the project belongs to Baltika. Moreover, Baltika has a malting plant with the same capacity in Tula. Now Baltika has no plans on increasing the volumes of malt production,” Alexey Kedrin, Baltika’s spokesman commented.

“Malting plants should be built either near barley producers or malt users. Russia has to develop the source of raw materials first, as barley production is at a very low level in the country. OAO Vena brewery consumes about 26 thousand tonnes of malt per annum. Its main suppliers are Soufflet Group in St. Petersburg and Viking Malt (Finland). Now the perspectives of malt market depend directly on beer market,” Tatiana Antonchik, a spokeswoman of OAO Vena told Delovoy Petersburg.

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