Holding “Avangard-Agro” is one of the largest and most effective agricultural producers in Russia. The company produces agricultural goods of the highest quality both from domestic and imported varieties of seeds of advanced selections, achieving European levels of productivity.
Company “Avangard-Agro” was founded in 2004, set up to growing malting barley for the company “Russky Solod” as the core business. To support the growing demands for high-quality barley for malt production, “Avangard-Agro” was efficiently expanding the scope of the land bank: in 2005 the aggregate area of farming lands of “Avangard-Agro” exceeded 35 thousand hectares, of which 25 thousand hectares were directly owned by the company.
Development of agricultural production was at the same time supported by building up farming machinery pool. Thus, in 2007 “Avangard-Agro” has purchased 100 harvesters John Deere and New Holland, and the total number of agricultural vehicles made 230 units.
Simultaneously with the expansion of the machinery pool “Avangard-Agro” launched a program of productivity enhancement and maintenance of high level of technological procedures. For this purpose satellite communication devices were installed at each enterprise of the holding, all vehicles were equipped with GPS-sensors and fuel sensors communicating information directly to automated filling stations.
By 2008 the area of farming lands made 142,5 thousand hectares, 98 thousand hectares of which were in the ownership of the company. In 2009 the land bank of “Avangard-Agro” comprised already 160 thousand hectares. Geographic reach of the company was extended: lands in the Belgorod and Lipetsk Regions were added to the assets in the Voronezh, Kursk and Orel Regions. Assortment of cultured crops has also expanded: in addition to malt barley “Avangard-Agro” began to cultivate wheat and buckwheat, and later – sugar beet and sunflower.
Today the company’s assets already exceed 450 thousand hectares of cultivated lands in 6 regions of Russia, and farming machinery pool consists of 8 000 machinery items, including 500 harvesters, 1 300 tractors and 1 600 automotive vehicles. “Avangard-Agro” is a vertically integrated industry service company comprising of 6 territorial subdivisions integrating over 52 farming units with modern European-made and American-made equipment, grain elevators and own seed production farm. Such structure ensures high-performance and flexible control system minimizing production costs.
Realization of products of “Avangard-Agro” is carried out by the trading company “Avangard-Agro-Trade”. Today the holding supplies grain products to manufacturers both in Russia and abroad: e.g., to certain European countries, in particular, Germany, Spain and Norway.
With respect to the realized products the company provides for maximal transparency and credibility of information — our customers may obtain a wide range of data for each batch of grain: from the list of agrochemicals used in the field from which the grain was harvested, to the exact number of the elevator where it has been stored.
One of the key areas of activity of the company, together with growing grain and industrial agricultural crops, is malt production. The holding includes eight malt production plants in Russia and Germany with the total production capacity over 850 thousand tons per year. All plants have a well-developed infrastructure: fully modernized elevators, road and railway access facilities, transforming plants, boiler houses. Company “Avangard-Agro-Trade”, realizing the products of the plants, provides Russian breweries with high-quality malt manufactured from own-produced domestic barley.
Company “Avangard Malz” is yet another malting subdivision of the holding. At present, the company carries out brewers malt production business at four plants located in Germany with the total capacity of 380 thousand tons of malt per year, which makes it the largest malt producer in the country. Plants of the company are located close to both primary selling markets and barley growing regions. Three of four plants of “Avangard-Malz” have a direct access to the key European waterways, and thus have transport accessibility to the central European ports Antwerp, Rotterdam, Hamburg and Bremerhaven.
Also, one of the largest stock breeding complexes in the Voronezh region is functioning as part of the holding “Avangard-Agro”. At present the complex possesses a herd of 1400 heads of cattle: 800 milk cows, 200 heifers and 400 heads of young Holstein stock of American breed. The complex is equipped with a cow house, calf house and milking and birth block with an up-to-date milking parlour with the capacity of 100 bearings per hour. The design capacity of the plant makes 7,5 thousand tons of milk per year.
In addition to this complex, the holding has two more dairy farms (in the Voronezh and Lipetsk regions) and a farm for fattening meat breeds of cattle (Voronezh region). To provide the livestock sector with high-quality feed, the holding “Avangard-Agro” has allocated 4 thousand hectares of land for fodder crops.