Russian Oils, a producer of vegetable oils, is investing 3.3 million euros ($4.1 million) in a new line to boost output by a third at one of its plants, the company said.
Russian Oils, which produces 12 percent of the country's sunflower oil before packing, said it planned to raise output to 400,000 tonnes a year at its Nevinnomyssky Oil Extraction Plant, one of three factories the company operates in southern Russia. The expansion will be complete by the summer of 2007 and will allow the line to produce 10 million bottles a month, Russian Oils said in a statement late on Tuesday.
"The increased capacity of the plant after the new line comes into operation will allow us to be more active in gaining market share," Russian Oils executive director, Anastasia Gukovskaya, said in the statement.
Russian Oils - Russkiye Masla in Russian - produces the Rus and Zlatitsa brands of vegetable oil and accounts for 4 percent of the country's output of bottled sunflower oil.
The company said it had total capacity to process 550,000 tonnes a year of sunflower seeds, or to produce 630 tonnes of oil a day. Russia has sown sunflower on 6,101,000 hectares for harvest in 2006, up 10.8 percent from last year's area, the Federal State Statistics Service said on Wednesday.