Poultry Firm Plans Pig Breeding, IPO

RUSSIA - Mosselprom, the Moscow region's biggest poultry producer, has begun a $96 million expansion into pig breeding and plans an initial listing of its shares abroad in 2008 or 2009, a senior company executive said Wednesday.

Mosselprom, whose chairman is showbiz and advertising magnate Sergei Lisovsky, will produce its first pork next year and is acquiring 30,000 hectares of land on which to grow feed wheat, deputy general director Vadim Kamashev said.

"We will almost double the amount of poultry we produce next year and, at the same time, we are taking a new direction -- pig breeding," Kamashev said in an interview.

Economic growth in excess of 6 percent has left behind much of the country's outdated farm sector, but the Kremlin has made agriculture -- and from last year, pig breeding in particular -- a priority sector for development.

Russia declared 2005 the Year of the Pig, but government attempts to stimulate growth have only this year started to bear fruit.

Kamashev said Mosselprom was updating its accounting practices to allow an initial public offering of its shares in 2008 or 2009.

Mosselprom has begun building a plant in the Oryol region, south of Moscow, to raise 216,000 pigs, or about 25,000 tons of pork, by the start of 2008, Kamashev said.

Source: The Moscow Times