EkoNiva was the first in Russia to produce more than 1 million tons of milk per year

‘1 million tons is a significant figure for both EkoNiva and the country's dairy industry, but not an end in itself,’ said Stefan Dürr, president of the holding. ‘The priority is always the quality of milk, production efficiency, comfortable working conditions for employees and animal health.’ 

The company expected to reach the production of 1 million tons of milk for the last calendar year, but according to its results, the gross yield was slightly less — about 925 thousand tons. In 2021, EkoNiva plans to produce about 1.1 million tons of raw milk, said a representative of the company to Agroinvestor.

Earlier it became known that Stefan Dürr, his companies Ekosem Agrar AG, Ekosem Schwarzerde GmbH and Elena Levina appealed to the Arbitration Court of Voronezh region with a claim against the structure of Rosselkhozbank RSHB-Finance. They ask to terminate the agreements on granting an option to conclude a contract for the purchase and sale of shares in the holding structures at a nominal price. After that, the head structure of the holding — Ekosem Agrar AG - announced that it was discussing medium- and long-term financing issues with the main lender Rosselkhozbank, as well as with Sberbank. A temporary transfer of a controlling stake in Russian operating companies to Rosselkhozbank is also being considered. Now the holding is operating normally and does not change its production plans, said its representative to Agroinvestor. In particular, EkoNiva continues to build three dairy farms in Moscow region, Tatarstan and Bashkiria for a total of 9.9 thousand cows and a total design capacity of about 100 thousand tons of raw milk per year.

In addition to production of raw materials, the agricultural holding develops milk processing. According to the representative of the company, now the share of processing accounts for 15-20% of the revenue from the group's dairy sector (includes production and processing of milk) and more than 10% in physical terms. At the factories in Voronezh, Kaluga and Novosibirsk regions, the company produces milk, yoghurts, cottage cheese and cheeses both under its own brands "EkoNiva" and "EkoNiva Organic", and under the brands of retail chains. In addition, in Novosibirsk region, the company continues to build a cheese factory worth 24.9 billion rubles. The design capacity of the enterprise is up to 1150 tons of raw milk per day. The plant will become the largest in Siberia and will enter the top five milk processors in the country, the company says.

EkoNiva manages assets in 13 regions: Voronezh, Kaluga, Kursk, Leningrad, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Orenburg, Ryazan, Samara and Tyumen regions, as well as in Altai region, Bashkiria and Tatarstan. The dairy division of the group unites 40 livestock complexes, which keep 212 thousand cattle, including 110 thousand dairy cows. The average milk yield on the company's farms in the second quarter of 2021 was 28.5 kg per forage-fed cow per day. Having 630 thousand hectares EkoNiva is one of the five largest owners of agricultural land.