Moscow plant "Karat" has no plans to relocate part of the cheese production to Belarus
Information about the plans of the company to relocate capacity is in the Protocol of the meeting held in the Ministry of agriculture of the Russian Federation to discuss the status of the experiment for labeling certain types of dairy products, a copy of which is available to TASS. "Take note of the information provided by Yevgeny Grebnev, General Director of JSC “Karat”, that according to the results of the survey, only two of the 16 production lines can be equipped for labeling, the remaining 14 production lines need additional equipment, and the estimated cost of additional investment costs is €120 thousand per one line, and there is no possibility to place additional equipment on two lines in the main production shop; if mandatory labeling is introduced, the issue of relocation the entire production to the Republic of Belarus will be considered", the document says.
"No relocation is planned, these are words taken out of context. And the Protocol was made up a little incorrectly, because I said: "You are pushing us to take it to Belarus, right?",- said Grebnev.
He said that he spoke about the impossibility of upgrading the line for the production of curd cheese, since there is no room for additional equipment in the shop. The General Director of the “Karat” plant also expressed hope that the proposed labeling of dairy products will not be implemented.
The Ministry of industry and trade confirmed the authenticity of the Protocol to TASS. At the same time, Deputy Minister of industry and trade of the Russian Federation Viktor Evtukhov noted that the relocation of production to Belarus does not make economic sense. "Work on the implementation of the product labeling system is carried out throughout the territory of the Eurasian Economic Union in accordance with the agreement on the labeling of goods by means of identification in the Eurasian Economic Union. According to existing approaches, if the introduction of product labeling is not supported by all member States of the Union and is introduced on the territory of one of them, then in order to trade on the territory of this member state of the Union, the enterprise will be forced to label the manufactured product", he said.
According to Yevtukhov, by the time the mandatory labeling of dairy products is introduced, printing houses will be able to apply labeling codes to all types of packages.
"As for the issue of increasing the cost of production, it has been repeatedly noted that this indicator depends on the level of technical equipment of the enterprise and on the chosen method of applying labeling codes. A real assessment can be made during the experiment", he said.
The Deputy Minister added that according to the results of the experiment, the issue of expediency of excluding a specific type of product from the labeling will be considered.
As the representative of the Center for advanced technologies development (CATD, labeling operator) reminded, labeling is already mandatory or is in the status of a pilot project in 15 industries. "In dairy and other categories, the pilot project, which precedes mandatory labeling, is aimed at ensuring that legal market participants have enough time to prepare all processes in a comfortable mode. In none of the industries where the process has already become mandatory, this has led to the closure or relocation of production by honest companies, it hasn’t led to a noticeable change in the operational internal processes of their work either. Although we have seen examples of overstated fears from the project in different industries, which were quickly stopped when companies started working constructively with the regulator and the CATD as an operator", he said.
Speaking about the difficulties of "Karat" with the equipment lines, the CATD reminded that for dairy products there are three ways of labeling - printing codes in the printing house, when the company orders the packaging, i.e. labeled packaging is supplied to the production site; the labeling on the finished product and printing of the codes on the production line at the plant.
"Based on information from industry representatives, we believe that 70% of manufacturers will use the services of printing houses, 30% will choose the method of labeling. None of these methods requires re-equipment of production lines, it is cheaper from the point of view of investment and easier from the operational point of view", stressed in the CATD.
At the end of January 2020, it became known that the Ministry of industry and trade proposed to extend the experiment on labeling of dairy products until May 31 and posted the corresponding draft resolution on the Federal portal of draft legal acts.
According to the current decree, a pilot project for labeling this type of product is being carried out in Russia since July 15, 2019 to February 29, 2020. During the experiment, milk and cream, milk and cream powder, fermented dairy products (kefir, yogurt, etc.), whey, butter, cheese, cottage cheese, and other products are labeled. The start of mandatory labeling of dairy products is scheduled for June 1, 2020.
Currently, experiments on product labeling are being implemented in several industries in Russia. In 2019, labeling of tobacco, perfume, shoes, tires and pneumatic tires, cameras and flash lamps, as well as five groups of light industry products became mandatory. Since January 1, 2020, mandatory labeling of medicines is provided, and since June 1, 2020 – of finished dairy products.
For labeling, a two-dimensional code in the Data Matrix format is used, which is applied directly to the product packaging or product label and contains detailed data about the product: name, manufacturer, date, time and place of production.
By 2024, Russia will have a unified national system for labeling and tracking products. The system operator is the Center for advanced technologies development, created on the basis of public-private partnership.
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