Cherkizovo Group ships a large batch of soybean oil to China

Cherkizovo Group, Russia’s leading meat producer, continues to expand its export portfolio to include other products in addition to meat. In February, the Company shipped to China about 2,800 tonnes of soybean oil produced by Cherkizovo-Oils oil crushing plant (OCP), with a total of 17,000 tonnes of oil planned for exports in 2024.

Cherkizovo-Oils OCP has completed the largest export shipment of soybean oil since the plant’s launch in the summer of 2022. About 2,800 tonnes of products went to China’s Zheng Dong Corporation (Forward East Group), which manages vegetable oil processing enterprises. The products were delivered by Evropac, one of Russia’s largest container carriers of agricultural products. A train of 130 containers with oil departed from Russian Railways’ Telegino station in the Lipetsk Region and headed for the Zabaykalsk/Manzhouli border crossing to reach the destination — Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China.

Cherkizovo Group started exporting soybean oil to China in 2023 after its OCP in May was registered with China Import Food Enterprises Registration (CIFER), a program to register exporters of food products and foodstuffs to the PRC.

Cherkizovo-Oils OCP is Russia’s largest soybean processor located in Yelets, Lipetsk Region. Besides soybean oil, the plant makes soybean meal, hulls, and lecithin with a processing capacity of some 1 million tonnes per year. Cherkizovo uses OCP’s products primarily to meet the needs of its own animal feed production facilities.

The increase in OCP’s processing capacity enables the Group to boost its exports, in particular to China, one of the largest buyers of Russian soybean oil. In 2024, Cherkizovo plans to export up to 17,000 tonnes of soybean oil, and in the future, its annual exports may reach 70,000 tonnes per year.

Since 2004, Zheng Dong Corporation has been supplying its own and partner enterprises with vegetable oils, feed additives, and grain from the CIS, Central and Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, North and Latin America. In China, the company covers the needs of six vegetable oil processors, the main ones being two plants in Chengdu and a new plant in Shanghai. They produce 7,000 tonnes of raw oil and refine 51,000 tonnes of vegetable oils (rapeseed, sunflower, soybean, linseed) per month.

Evropac Group offers transportation and logistics solutions, as well as transportation and transshipment of liquid, bulk, and general cargoes. The company’s key focus is on multimodal export transportation of agricultural products, including bulk and liquid cargoes such as oilseeds, legumes, and grain. In 2023, Evropac exported more than 1.1 million tonnes of liquid cargoes in flexitanks, a record for the Russian market, and over 145,000 tonnes of bulk cargoes. The company owns the Gulfstream container terminal in Novorossiysk. 450 rapid Evropac container trains traveled to export destinations in 2023.