EkoNiva commissions new dairy plant in Bashkortostan
23 November 2022 News from the Company
EkoNiva Group, the largest dairy producer in Russia, has completed the construction of the new Semeno-Makarovo dairy plant in the Republic of Bashkortostan. It is the largest dairy project to be implemented in the republic.
The dairy plant, designed for 2,800 cows and 3,200 young animals, was built with financial support from Rosselkhozbank. The total investment was over 3.1 billion rubles.
The facility consists of three cow pens, calf pens, areas for keeping young animals, a feed store and a hygiene station. The farm has implemented a system of careful loose housing of animals. For effective management of the herd and its feeding, modern special programmes from own development (EkoFeed) are used in the dairy farm. The animals are identified via chips with uniform numbers .
All animals in the dairy plant are high-yielding Holstein cows. Currently, 87.5 tonnes of milk are produced per day. The average daily milk yield is 31.2 kg milk per dairy cow.
In Semeno-Makarovo, as in all modern dairy farms of the EkoNiva Group, carousel milking systems have been installed. The circular platform can milk 72 cows simultaneously . After each animal, the cluster is automatically sterilized without human intervention.
The implementation of the project has created 128 new jobs. Most of the company's employees are under 40 years old. Comfortable living conditions, including a canteen, were created for them. In addition, the EkoNiva Group had already participated in co-financing the construction of a residential building in the village of Ermekeyevo, next to which the dairy plant is located, in 2021. Eight employees of the farm received accommodation as a result.
"One of the most important tasks we set ourselves when we think of development is to create pleasant working and living conditions in the countryside. So that people can not only work successfully and with pleasure, but also learn, spend leisure time and live. I am convinced that the EkoNiva dairy plant in Bashkiria will become a serious growth site for the entire western part of the republic, ensuring further sustainable socio-economic development of the region's rural areas", said Stefan Dürr, President of the EkoNiva Group.
Head of the Republic of Bashkortostan Radiy Khabirov said: "We considered this project in September 2019 at 'Investchas'. The company received tax incentives and subsidies for the purchase of livestock and equipment under existing programmes. Only five years ago it was hard to imagine such powerful dairy farms with a large number of cows and state-of-the-art animal care technologies operating in Bashkortostan.”
About the company
EkoNiva Group is a vertically integrated agricultural holding, the largest raw milk producer in Russia and Europe. The company’s assets are located in 13 regions of Russia: Voronezh, Kaluga, Kursk, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Orenburg, Ryazan, Samara and Tyumen oblasts, Altai area, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. Dairy farming is the main business of the Group, which owns 40 modern dairies housing 220,000 head of cattle, including 110,000 dairy cows. In 2021, EkoNiva produced over 1.1 million tonnes of raw milk. Since 2013, the Group has been developing its own milk processing. EkoNiva is a top 5 owner of agricultural land having 630,000 ha. Preliminary figures from the unaudited consolidated financial statement indicate that in 2021 the sales revenue of the Group grew by 33% to 50.8 billion RUB, EBITDA – by 3%, exceeding 16.6 billion RUB.