Russia's Federal Fisheries Agency disclosing project for nationwide coldstore chain

Within the overall upgrade for the industry Russia's Federal Fisheries Agency has disclosed a huge plan for a nationwide coldstorage chain of modern facilities to be built through a partnership of government and private interests, reports www.fishnet-russia.com (www.fishnet.ru) with reference to a report delivered by Russia's fishery head Andrey Krainy.

Up to 90% of existing coldstores built in 1960s do not comply with the current standards. Worn-out equipment accounts for up to 70%. The existing coldstores are not capable of meeting the growing demand from importers, producers and seafood trade operators.

Besides, the coldstores' distribution by region is irregular with only 7% of the colstore facilities located in the nation's largest fishery basin of Far East. In the European part of Russia the bulk of the coldstores is concentrated in Moscow and the surrounding region (14% and 31% correspondingly), Saint Petersburg and the surrounding Leningrad Oblast (8% all together).

Such situation shows a strong need in creating a continuous coldstore chain for the fishery industry and in order to build up the conditions for implementation of investment projects on coldstores' construction and modernisation the Agency has submitted to the nation's Cabinet a draft order on subsidies of interest rates for the credits for these purposes. Besides, there is a need to suspend import duties for imported equipment necessary for coldstores' refurbishment.

At present 34 coldstore projects are ready for implementation, the total value estimated at 13.3 billion RUB.

Besides, the Agency has been looking into establishment of a joint stock company with participation of state capital to be mostly engaged in large scale construction and development of seafood coldstores. Presentation of the project has already taken place.

Implementation of the above measures on coldstores development is supposed to result into 226,000 tonnes of coldstorage capacities to be commissioned under the investment projects and 175,500 tonnes of these capacities to be launched thanks to the joint stock company project on coldstore infrastructure development.

The aforesaid projects are to create 1900 extra jobs in the industry.