Following the customer’s invitation to discuss the technical and practical aspects of soy quality and in an effort to endorse U.S. soy quality and explore new supply possibilities for continuing evolving Russian meat producing industries, USSEC consultants visited Cherkizovo’s Research Center near Moscow and had technical discussions with specialists from the center and Cherkizovo’s oils team.
Cherkizovo Group is Russia’s largest consumer-centric manufacturer of meat products. The group ranks first in meat processing and aggregate poultry production and second in pork production. Cherkizovo Group encompasses 9 full cycle poultry production facilities, 16 modern pork production facilities, 8 meat processing plants and 9 feed mills. The group also includes Tambov Turkey facility, a joint Russian-Spanish venture. In 2018, Cherkizovo Group produced 1 million tonnes of meat and meat products and 1.83 million tonnes of compound feeds, making it the largest feed producer in Russia. The company is committed to quality and remains one of the key prospects for U.S. soy due to its leading position in meat and feed production.
Keeping high quality standards of operations and finished products requires a sustainable and reliable system of testing and quality control. The Research Center of Cherkizovo Group is an innovative laboratory complex at the world level, able to test any of the products produced at the Cherkizovo facilities or from outside clients. The USSEC consultants were welcomed by Dr. Sergii Shapovalov, director of the research center, and by Dr. Yelena Kornilova, head of Testing of Feeds and Animal Products Quality, who introduced their chief departments and the activities at their lab. The ultra-modern laboratory has highly qualified personnel with an average age around 30, who use some of the most modern lab equipment capable to perform a wide range of analyses of raw materials and feed and food ingredients that go from dry matter or ash to mass spectrophotometry and gene sequencing.
Cherkizovo is investigating a new investment project dealing with the construction of a soybean crushing plant in Russia’s Lipetsk region to start production of Hi-Pro soybean meal for internal consumption. The company is already implementing some livestock projects in this part of Russia. The USSEC consultants informed local managers about the importance of using high quality soybeans for the production of Hi-Pro soybean meal, problems with low crude protein content in local soybeans, and the opportunities and benefits of using U.S. soybeans. USSEC consultant Dr. Iani Chihaia shared the presentation, “Factors affecting the Nutritional Quality of Soybeans and Soybean Meal: From Field to Processing.”

The Cherkizovo specialists were grateful to USSEC for the visit and look for further cooperation and new opportunities to receive modern knowledge on soy processing, quality control, and technical training.