Russia boosting number of farms for sturgeon caviar production

With the wild sturgeon stocks being in depletion, Russian private companies are increasingly investing in the production of farmed sturgeon caviar and the number of sturgeon farms has been rising in the last few years, according to the Russian Fish Insider Report published by http://www.megafishnet.com/.  

In particular two large facilities for premium sturgeon caviar production are being constructed for the Russians by the German-Arabian operation the United Food Technologies International.

When completed the production centre in the regional capital Rostov-on-Don will have the capacity of 17 metric tons of black caviar per year while the Siberian farm in Novosibirsk will be able to produce up to 8 tonnes of the premium product.

As per 2010, according to inFOLIO Research Group, farmed sturgeon caviar was produced by 10 companies while sturgeons were cultivated by at least 50 farms.

The largest operations include DIANA Fish Trading LLC (Vologda) with 7.5 tonnes per year, Beluga Company (Astrakhan) with 2 tonnes, Raskat LLC (Astrakhan) with 1.2 tonnes, Karmanovskii Rybkhoz Fish Farm (Ufa) with 900 and KROK Sturgeon Breeding Complex (Kaluga) with 700 kg in 2010 and expected production of 1.78 tonnes of sturgeon caviar in 2011.