Two large centers for the storage and processing of fruits and vegetables were planned to be built by investors in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region.
However, both experts and representatives of small and medium-sized agribusiness are not quite sure of their need: large networks have their own storage facilities, and for small producers one more link in the “producer-buyer” chain is not profitable.
For some manufacturers, the storage problem is not important at all. Photo: Sergey Nikolaev / RG
The idea to build wholesale distribution centers (ORCs) for the needs of small agricultural enterprises and farmers was recognized as appropriate at the federal level some time ago. Due to the lack of storage during the harvest season, prices fall so much that producers are not even able to recoup costs.
For example, this year in the Pskov region there was an excellent harvest of apples. Therefore, procurement offices took them at a price of 50 kopecks to one ruble per kilogram. In the shops of St. Petersburg at this time the price of domestic apples - from 50 rubles per kilogram, that is, 100 times more expensive. Large storage facilities that can be rented for a certain amount could solve this problem: the grower stores his crop in proper conditions and sells it as needed or at the best price offer.
Work on the creation of a federal network of ORC was launched in 2014. However, five years later it ceased.
“There is nothing surprising in this,” says Dmitry Trofimov, director of the Scientific and Educational Center for Financial Technologies of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. - These projects, as a rule, do not find support from business. This fact should in itself lead one to think about how profitable such proposals will be.
According to Trofimov, the main miscalculation in this case is the absence of a strategic planning document. For example, there is a Strategy for the development of trade in the Russian Federation for 2010-2015 and the period up to 2020, separately there are measures to support agricultural producers at the federal level and benefits that the regions can provide.
However, without “a concept for the development of a commodity market, which stipulates both its structure, and regulation of competition, and the ability for the state to influence pricing, there is no reason to talk about the validity of the development of the ORC network.” Against this background, experts assure, projects for the construction of a USC in Gatchina district and Shushary should be regarded as ordinary business projects.
Farmers themselves do not yet believe in the profitability of such a crop scheme, experts say
“Purchase prices at such USCs are at the minimum level, so farmers are trying to secure sales on their own,” says Yuri Savelov, a member of the Opora Rossii presidium. - In European countries, such centers exist in the format of cooperatives, when each participant has a small share in this structure. Our function of the USC is only to accept products from farmers, pay them, and this is where it all ends. Official information about the project in the Gatchina region confirms this point of view.
- The investor plans to build four vegetable stores with a capacity of up to 10 thousand tons, an enterprise for the processing of vegetables and fruits with a capacity of 7,6 thousand tons per year with the production of gelling components, including pectin, with a capacity of up to one thousand tons per year, - the government of the Leningrad region said ... - Currently, preliminary agreements have been reached on the supply of raw materials: fruits - from the Krasnodar Territory, Lipetsk, Tambov and Voronezh regions, vegetables - from the Leningrad region and regions of the North-West.
The construction of the complex in Druzhnaya Gorka should be completed by 2024, the ORC in Shushary is planned to be launched two years earlier - in 2022. There is no information in the official description of the projects that at least part of the area of the complex can be leased. However, representatives of the investing companies told the RG correspondent that there was such an intention.
“For those who do not want to be involved in sales during the year for one reason or another, we are ready to offer approximate purchase prices at the beginning of the season,” explains Svetlana Tuchkova, General Director of Wholesale Distribution Center LLC. - But since storage equipment is expensive - after all, agricultural products need not just a hangar, but their own temperature for each type of vegetables and fruits - we are ready to provide their areas to producers.
Farmers themselves do not yet believe in the profitability of such a scheme. According to Aleksey Konashenkov, head of the Prometey farm from the Pskov region, who now cultivates about 300 hectares of land annually and is engaged in the production of vegetables, potatoes, grain, hay, strawberries, as well as fattening cattle for meat, for the North-West, the creation of an ORC doesn't make sense at all.
- Maybe in some region such a center is needed, - he believes. “But thanks to management and proper marketing, you can do without it. Optimally, at the expense of the state, each farmer should have a normal storage facility, and the USC should be replaced with a customer selection service.
Source: https://rg.ru/