The foundation stone for the new powerful elevator complex of the Avgust-Agro Management Company was laid in the Bugulma municipal district of the Republic of Tatarstan. The solemn ceremony dedicated to the start of construction took place on June 6, 2023. The first stage of the complex will start operating by September 2024, and reaching the design capacity is scheduled for 2025, after which the facility will be able to receive and ship agricultural products in the amount of 450 thousand tons per year. The location of the future elevator will allow transporting grain from the east of the republic by road and rail to the southern ports. It is planned to invest about 2,9 billion rubles in construction. The complex is being built as part of the development of the agricultural business of the company "August", a major Russian manufacturer of chemical plant protection products.
Today, August-Agro Management Company, whose work in the Republic of Tatarstan began in 2018, is already one of the leading agricultural producers in the region. The area cultivated by the agricultural holding in the territory of Tatarstan is 194 thousand hectares. In 2022, the harvest of August-Agro farms in the republic reached 510 thousand tons in gross volume. In the current situation on the agricultural market, the agrarians of the Middle Volga region face the issue of building short logistics for marketing products outside the region. The construction of a modern harvesting-type elevator complex in the south-east of Tatarstan is intended to partly solve this problem.
The design capacity of the elevator will be 100 thousand tons of one-time grain storage. It is planned to bring a 1,6 km long railway line to the facility, which will connect the site of the future complex with the station of the city of Bugulma. It should be noted that at the moment "August-Agro" is already building another elevator with a similar capacity - "Sviyazhsk-Zernoprodukt" on the navigable section of the Sviyaga River, where it will be possible to ship agricultural products not only to rail and road, but also to water transport.
The ceremony dedicated to the start of the construction of the elevator in the Bugulma district was attended by the Minister of Agriculture and Food of the Republic of Tatarstan Marat Zyabbarov, the general director of the management company "August-Agro" Aidar Galyautdinov and the head of the Bugulma municipal district Linar Zakirov.
“In the harvest years in the Republic of Tatarstan, about 2 million tons of grain remain for sale, so this project is very relevant. The capacity of the new elevator will be up to 450 thousand tons per year”, - noted at the ceremony the head of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the region Marat Zyabbarov.
“This point of shipment, storage and processing will allow the development not only of the Bugulma region, but also of the entire south-east of the Republic of Tatarstan, - emphasized Aidar Galyautdinov, General Director of the management company "August-Agro". - Now the issue of shipping and organizing routes for export is extremely acute, and thanks to the elevator we will be able to quickly deliver the products of Tatarstan farmers to the southern ports.”
The construction of the elevator complex will be carried out in stages. It is assumed that the first stage will start operating by September 2024, and the design capacity will be reached by 2025. A feature of the elevator under construction will be a high-speed line for shipment to railway cars - 350 tons per hour, which will be provided thanks to productive conveyors. This will make it possible to load a train of 55–60 wagons per day, while at present an average of 2–3 wagons is loaded during the specified period. Such productivity will be an advantage for both farmers and carriers.
The cost of the project should be 2,9 billion rubles, including VAT, of which over 286 million rubles are planned to be spent on infrastructure construction projects. Not far from the future elevator are the land of the August-Leninogorsk agricultural company, which will become the anchor customer of the complex's services for long-term storage and processing of products. At the same time, the elevator complex will be able to provide third-party agricultural producers with a wide range of services for storage, cleaning, drying, transshipment and loading of grain. By 2025, the enterprise will create 86 jobs.
“We have been working on this project for two years,” said the head of the district, Linar Zakirov. “The issue of food security is number one today, and the construction of the newest elevator is a significant, large-scale event, since we really need modern high-quality storage and processing of crops.”