Sausage will become soy

In the Russian market, the shortage of beef is a crisis situation in the domestic meat market can not only inflate prices, but also worsen the quality of meat products. Recall that in connection with the suspension of beef imports from Argentina, a ban on the supply of meat from Ukraine and from some states of Brazil and the United States, many domestic meat processing plants were faced with a lack of raw materials. Now it turns out that this is not all bad news.

“If restrictions on the import of raw materials are not removed, raw -button sausages will become“ golden ”,“ milk ”and“ doctoral ”will begin to make poultry from soy and meat,” said Alexey Soshnikov, CEO of Dymov. “First of all, the lack of raw materials will affect those companies that directly depend on imports in their production,” adds Gennady Frolov, director of public relations with the Cherkizovo group. “We are trying to follow the path of the least dependence on imported products, buying regional meat processing plants.”

But domestic meat processing plants will still not be able to get by on their own. So, according to official statistics, Russia's need for imported meat is approximately 600 thousand tons per year. “Indeed, a number of companies can provide itself with raw materials at the expense of internal resources,” says Vladimir Kochetkov, an analyst with Finams, the Finams. “However, those companies that were originally oriented towards imported raw materials can hardly find themselves in the domestic market, since all places have long been occupied.” Therefore, most manufacturers will either infuriate prices for their products in one way or another, or follow the path of cheaper, using surrogates instead of beef.

“At the moment, meat processors really lack raw materials. The situation is also complicated by the lack of the possibility of prolonging promising contracts, since importers do not know how long the bans of beef will operate, ”said Dmitry Kozlov, deputy general director for the production and quality of Mirital. It is possible that interruptions in the supply of meat will be reflected in the economy of the country as a whole. So, when in 2003, Russia introduced quotas for imports, quota to beef led to a 20 percent deficit, which, in turn, made a significant contribution to the growth of inflation.

“The only thing we can do in this situation is to reach a certain limit of profitability, after which we will be forced to increase vacation prices,” says Dmitry Kozlov. Manufacturers promise 25 percent rise in prices. They prefer not to spread about the amount of soy and chicken that they are ready to add to cheap varieties of sausages.

Some analysts, however, do not exclude that the situation with meat is not as deplorable as manufacturers try to present. And it is very likely that the resulting hype is only a consequence of a competently planned campaign. “The real increase in meat prices is not so great,” says Vladislav Kochetkov. - The deficit can be compensated for by European suppliers. So, perhaps, manufacturers are trying to play the same scenario as with salt and sugar. ”

03/27/2006 / Kira Remneva, the material was published in the newspaper No. 52 dated 03.28.2006.