Olam Board of Directors visit to Rusmolco

On August 24-25, the Board of Directors of Olam International Company visited Rusmolco’s  facilities in the Penza region, Russian Federation. They started their visit from the newly constructed seed plant in Bashmakovo which is about 200 km from Penza. This modern seed line has a capacity to prepare over 25,000 mt per annum of multi crop seeds. It will not only support Rusmolco’s seed requirements but also help to provide high quality seeds to other farmers in the region and is a sound business strategy given that there is a shortage of reasonably priced good quality seeding material in the region. As of now, the construction and installation works have been completed and winter wheat seed production is already underway.

The next stop was at our grain and oilseeds elevator located in the Pachelma area. The elevator is designed for acceptance of up to 5000 tons of grain per day and can store 100,000 mt and dry nearly 400,000 mt per annum. This capacity is one of the highest amongst elevators in the Penza region and it is an ideal configuration for large scale commercial agriculture like Rusmolco. This allows us to harvest at a high speed which is not constrained by elevator capacity. The Board members also met with the Governor of the Penza region - Ivan Belozertsev at the elevator who highly appreciated the current level of the readiness of the facility and how Rusmolco was bringing agricultural best practices to the region through its seed line, elevator, modern machinery and so on.  The facilities are ready and currently under use for 2016 harvesting campaign. A rail road is under construction and expected to be complete by 2017.

During his conversation with Mr. Kwa Chong Seng, Board Chairman of Olam International, Ivan Belozertsev emphasized that the region is interested in further cooperation with Olam. «The Government of the Penza Region and the Ministry of Agriculture will continue to support the company which provides a considerable number of our residents with workplaces and which is a responsible taxpayer for the region», - said the Governor.

In turn, Mr. Kwa Chong Seng thanked the head of the region for his support to Rusmolco/Olam and shared business development plans. He stated that the farming business in Russia is more profitable and more promising compared to many other developed countries. «Specifically in the Penza region, there is a good fertile land with black soils which does not require artificial irrigation for crops and, with proper agricultural technology, you can get good crop yields», - said the Chairman of the Board of Directors.

After that, the Board members, on their way to a dairy farm, visited Rusmolco’s fields of spring wheat, lupin, corn and soya as well as they took part in harvesting of sugar beet and looked at the seeding of winter crops. It was a novel experience for visitors from Singapore to see such massive tracts of flat lands with fertile soils with crops that are getting ready for harvest.  For example, this year we expect to get 50 tons / hа for sugar beet, 4.0  tons  / hа for wheat & barley, 3.0 tons / hа for sunflowers, 8.0 tons/ha for corn. Not only our agricultural yields have improved by over 20% from last year, but they are some of the record yields in the region as noted by the ministry of Agriculture.

The last stop for the day was at Arshinovka dairy farm, which produces over 90 tons of high quality milk per day. The guests got a chance to appreciate and understand the complexities of dairy farming through an exhibition prepared by the farm’s specialists.  The visitors finally got a chance to see what fresh milk tastes like and also sampled various dairy products made by processing plants using Rusmolco’s milk. There were variety of cheeses, yoghurt, kefir, tvorog, fresh milk, etc., that were supplied by Danone, Molcom and Sarmich who are all customers of Rusmolco. The members of the Board were delighted with the quality & taste of products and the performance of the farm in general. One of the board members remarked that such milk products, made from high quality fresh milk without artificial additives and palm oil, do indeed taste different!

The delegation also had a chance to see and understand the process of manure handling and preparing feed crops. More importantly they saw that Rusmolco was indeed acting with responsibility towards the environment. The waste generated by the dairies was just not getting dumped somewhere but was treated and applied in a responsible way on our own fields acting as fertilizer.

The second day was devoted to the visit to herd reproduction centres in the Kuznetsk area.  The ultimate goal of these farms is to home-grow pedigree heifers in good health, with better genetics, less stress and more acclimatised to Penza’s conditions. We expect that in future these centres will not only produce heifers for Rusmolco’s requirements but supply pedigree heifers to other dairy farms of Russia. At a 5 200 head capacity, this is Europe’s largest and most modern herd reproduction facility.

The Chairman and Board Members were happy about not only the facilities and project execution but also delighted with the team and conveyed their best wishes for continued success to the Rusmolco people. The Chairman specifically commented on the strong alignment within the team that employees were motivated and engaged with the roles they were performing in both Dairy and Crop production.

   
                   At Arshinovka Dairy Farm                                                  At Bashmakovo grain harvesting

Photogallery

August 26, 2016