Efko Group may become the sole owner of the dairy plant “Sloboda”
JSC Efko food products applied to the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) for a preliminary consent to purchase 100% of LLC Dairy Plant "Sloboda" in Belgorod region. The notification is published in the FAS database.
Efko Group launched the plant “Sloboda” in April 2015. The company specializes in the production of yoghurts of the same name, the design capacity is 200 tons of finished products per day, investment in construction exceeded 1.1 billion rubles. At the end of 2017, Efko announced the creation of a ‘national dairy company’ by Belgorod holding Green Valley and the deputy of the regional Duma Sergey Yudin, which later included the plant "Sloboda". Today, the plant belongs to LLC Agro-industrial holding Green Valley, where 49% is owned by Efko food products, 45% - Mr. Yudin, the rest is owned by LLC APIK, which is owned by several individuals associated with Efko. In addition, Green Valley includes seven dairy farms for 9,5 thousand cows and more than 50 thousand hectares of land.
Efko is one of the largest food producers in the Russian Federation. It produces sauces, vegetable oils and other products under the brands "Sloboda", Altero, etc. In 2019, the revenue of Efko was 122 billion rubles, and its net profit was 1.8 billion rubles. The main owner of the group is Valery Kustov.
The filing of the petition was explained in Efko, by ‘a simple redistribution of assets within the holding.’ A source of Kommersant in the market heard that the partners in Green Valley may have disagreements and the issue of dividing the business is periodically raised. Kommersant could not contact Sergey Yudin, and Green Valley did not answer the questions.
Dmitry Gabyshev, Managing Director of Peregrine Capital, says that the consolidation of Sloboda by Efko structures could have been provided for by the initial agreements with another partner. According to him, the configuration of the transaction can be very different, including non-monetary, transfer at face value and with an additional payment to one or the other party.
Dmitry Matveev, owner of Group of Companies Kabosh, does not rule out that the partners in the Green Valley could have different views on business development, further investments, etc. According to him, Efko can simply "return" its own asset initially and then not buy out dairy farms from the Green Valley. For the production of yoghurts, the quality of raw materials is not as important as for the production of, for example, hard cheeses, besides, Belgorod region produces enough raw milk and there will be no problems with purchases, says Mr. Matveev.
According to forecasts of the Ministry of Agriculture, in 2021, milk production in the Russian Federation may grow by 1.2%, to 32.6 million tons. At the same time, the cost of production is growing. As follows from the materials of the analytical center of Soyuzmoloko, in March 2021, the index of the operating cost of milk production (RMCI) was 18.2% higher than a year earlier, against the background of increased feed costs, the devaluation of the ruble, the increase in the cost of electricity, fuel and general inflation.
As noted by the interlocutors of Kommersant in the industry, because of the crisis, Russians switched to the consumption of traditional dairy products, and the demand for modern categories was reduced. So, according to Nielsen, offline sales of yogurt from March 2020 to February 2021 decreased by 5%, drinking yogurt - by 2% in physical terms year-on-year. In monetary terms, these categories showed zero dynamics. For comparison, sales of pasteurized milk grew by 6% in terms of volume and 9% in monetary terms, sour cream - by 7% and 13%, respectively.
