The Russian Fishery Company (RFC) will build a new pollock processing facility near Vladivostok, in Russia’s Far East, which will qualify it for additional quota volumes under a government-backed national investment plan.
The deal, previously reported by SeafoodSource, was finalized on Friday, 25 May, according to an RFC press release. According to the agreement, RFC and affiliate DV Invest LLC will begin construction on a pollock processing factory later this year, with the goal of beginning operations there in 2020. The facility will have a processing capacity of 60,000 metric tons (MT) of pollock and 25,000 MT of value-added products.
In exchange, once the factory is commissioned, RFC will receive an additional 14,500 MT of pollock and harring quota, according to the terms of a investment-for-quota program initiated by the Russian government and overseen by Russia’s Federal Agency for Fisheries (Rosrybolovstvo).
The agreement was signed on 25 May by RFC CEO for Strategic Planning and Business Development Ivan Osadchy, CEO for Strategic Planning and Business Development of RFC, and Rosrybolovstvo deputy head Petr Savchuk.
“Our joint objective is to make the industry modern, technologically advanced. We expect that the result of these positive changes will be visible, first of all, to our Russian consumers, and products under the sign ‘Made in Russia’ will be the best in the world,” Savchuk said.
The factory will be located in "Nadezhdinskaya” Priority Development Territory, near Vladivostok, Russia. RFC estimated its investment in the project will total between USD 12 and 15 million (EUR 9.7 to 12.2 million).
"The construction of modern on-shore processing facilities will be an important step in the implementation of RFC strategy to increase the share of high value-added products in our portfolio," RFC CEO Andrey Teterkin said. “The new factory will ensure the expansion of the company's ability to produce high-quality products from wild whitefish, including [the] ‘ready-to-cook’ category, which meets the RFC’s focus on the entire value chain for the end consumers."
