Profile


Name: Artem Belov He has been serving as the general director of Soyuz- moloko since 2019. Between 2009 and 2012 he was an advi- sor of the Russian Agricultural Minister, after which he took on a position at Soyuzmoloko, at first as executive director. Belov graduated from the St. Petersburg State University with a degree in Strategic Management and Marketing.


Russian regions pay special attention to the development of small- and medium-sized milk farms, including Leningrad Oblast and Kirov Oblast. In fact, in the area of milk production these re- gions are rather effective, although they have no megafarms. But in general, the main trend in Russia is building big farms. As for the processing segment, the picture in Russia and in the rest of the world is very similar. Consolidation tendency is what we’ve experienced for decades. In North America and Europe there are companies processing 3,000–4,000 tonnes of milk per day. We have no such production complexes yet, but to be successful we need to follow the global trends, which are enlargement of pro- duction capacities and narrowing of their production focus. This means that the companies are increasingly beginning to produce only certain categories, not the entire range of dairy products. We have small companies with revenue ranging between € 50 million and € 200 million per year, and we expect them to merge in the coming years.


Could you tell us about the breeding base of the Russian dairy industry? In general, the share of breeding stock in the Russian dairy indus- try is currently around 12%. Of that figure, 60–70% is either Hol- stein or Holstenised Black and White breed. We have our own


indigenous breeds as well, but mostly the market has Holstein, which is the most popular breed in the world. A huge amount of work needs to be done in regard to the breeding stock. In this area we are still lagging behind the world’s leading countries. We are lacking some basic things, like an identification base, which means we have not yet counted all the cows we have in Russia. On another note we need to clearly determine the genetics of our stock. We also need to encourage cattle breeders to play a more important role. This could be done through industry associations. In Russia, we have a long-standing practice where regional insem- ination centres play an important role in this area. In my opinion, to some extent this constrains the development of breeding farms. In general, there are some positives as some big breeders are emerging in Russia, and we could make strong progress in this area in the next seven to ten years.


Russian veterinary watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor regularly reports on finding counterfeit dairy products on grocery shelves. What do you think about this? There are two problems – counterfeit and also falsification. The first is when exclusive rights of a brand owner are being over- stepped. Falsification is when there are some violations in the product composition. The Russian dairy industry is characterised


▶DAIRY GLOBAL | Volume 7, No. 2, 2020 19


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