A joint venture in Russia will see a fishing company and a food processing and distribution firm team up to produce ready-to-eat Alaska pollock products for the domestic market.
Russian Fishery Company (RFC) and the Agama Group announced a long-term agreement on 26 October, under the terms of which RFC will supply frozen-at-sea Alaska pollock to the Agama Group, which will produce ready-to-eat products under the “Agama-Nordeco” brand. Nordeco is RFC’s retail brand.
“We highly appreciate the experience and expertise of the Agama Group in the production and promotion of high-quality fish products,” RFC CEO Fedor Kirsanov said in a press release. “I am sure that the joint brand ‘Agama-Nordeco’ will guarantee a consistently high quality of Alaska pollock products, the valuable properties of which we reveal to the Russian consumers.”
The product line will include 100-gram fillet portions and minced pollock, as well as full, individually-packed fillets. According to the agreement, RFC will supply the pollock in fillet and mince blocks, as well as in shatterpack, to Agama production facilities. At those facilities, Agama will produce “ready-to-cook” products without fully defrosting the fish during processing, the company said.
“Agama has always done and is doing everything to guarantee the Russian consumers the maximum quality of fish and seafood, which is impossible without close integration with producers of raw materials,” Agama CEO Yuri Alasheev said. “We believe that long-term cooperation with such a stable and strategically-minded partner as the RFC will reliably provide Russian people with perfect Alaska pollock products.”
RFC will commence supplying Agama with pollock in December 2018, with the first “Agama-Nordeco” products appearing in stores in the first quarter of 2019.
In a separate joint venture announced in August 2018, RFC and Agama will partner on the construction of a new cod and haddock processing facility in Murmansk. The processing facility will be capable of producing more than 50 tons of finished products daily, and is scheduled to open by the end of 2019.
The joint venture, officially named “Russian Cod,” will invest up to USD 12 million (EUR 10.6 million) in the plant, which will be equipped with “modern, high-tech equipment to allow production of high quality fish product, [including] cod and haddock fillets and mince,” Kirsanov said in a press release.
As part of an incentives package for investing in Russia’s fisheries sector, Russia’s Federal Agency for Fisheries will grant RFC an additional 1,800 metric tons of cod quota and 500 metric tons of haddock quota after the facility is commissioned, which is expected for the 2020 fishing season.
“The construction of the factory is one of the onshore factories is an important step of our company towards the consumer,” Kirsanov said. “Together with partners, we provide a complete production chain from harvesting to a high-quality finished product. The new processing facilities provide increased efficiency and marginality of the RFC business, new jobs and additional tax deductions in the region of the company's operation.”
Also in August 2018, RFC announced the expansion of a pollock processing plant in Russia’s Far East, as part of a joint venture between it, DV Invest LLC and the AMG Group. The construction will increase production at the facility by 20 percent by 2021, resulting in daily production of around 100 metric tons of finished pollock products, including ready-to-eat value-added products.
In total, RFC will receive 14,500 metric tons of additional pollock and herring quota for its RUB 1.5 billion (USD 22.8 million, EUR 20.1 million) investment in building new onshore seafood-related processing facilities.
Photo courtesy of RFC
