Booming meat plant to play key role in Russian turkey surge

Globalmeatnews

Cherkizovo Group’s turkey plant, run in a joint venture with Spain’s Grupo Fuertes, hit full capacity this week and company executives hope to double the factory’s throughput.

Meat giant Cherkizovo Group’s vertically integrated turkey facility in Tambov is responsible for around a fifth of the turkey meat produced in Russia, but Cherkizovo chiefs said this could be increased to just under half.

Producing around 50,000 tonnes (t) of turkey meat per year in Tambov, Cherkizovo said its factory has the capacity to reach 100,000t within the next 12 months.

As a whole, Russia produced around 230,000t of turkey meat last year, according to the company.

Big ‘potential’

Its statement of intent comes after the huge facility in south-eastern Russia hit full production capacity five years after Cherkizovo entered into a joint venture with Grupo Fuertes in 2012 to build a scalable turkey plant.

Investment in the factory is close to RUB10.2 billion ($179m) and the firm said it expected any return on investment to take approximately eight years, but it sees huge potential in the plant.

“Turkey meat has great potential on the Russian market and total turkey meat production in Russia was about 230,000t in 2016,”