Thai & Chinese investors to build $1bn dairy plant in Russia

Thailand's largest agribusiness Charoen Pokphand Group (CP) and China’s Banner Dairy are to spend $1 billion building a diary in the Russian city of Ryazan. The facility intends to produce 400 thousand tons of milk products annually.

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The Russian Direct Investment Fund will reportedly seal the deal with the foreign investors on the sidelines of the Thai-Russian Business Dialogue forum in Saint Petersburg.

The plant will include dairy farms with 80,000 milking cows and 40,000–60,000 hectares of grain, as well as a feed factory, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev told Vedomosti daily.

The project is expected to be up and running within 3-5 years and would be the biggest raw milk producer in Russia with a capacity of 300,000–350,000 tons a year. The CP Group will run the enterprise.

Last year, the Thai conglomerate said it was looking to invest $600 million in meat and milk production in Russia, and was examining opportunities in several Russian regions.

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Founded in 1921, CP Group is one of world's largest conglomerates with investments in over 20 countries. The corporation's Charoen Pokphand Foods is one of the biggest producers of animal feed with plants in Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma, Turkey, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan and US.

Another Asian company investing into the production of meat and milk in Russia is Vietnam’s TH True Milk. The groundbreaking for a livestock breeding complex and milk processing plant took place on Wednesday in the town of Volokolamsk, in the Moscow region. The company intends to spend $500 million and open its first facility with 45,000 head of livestock next year.