German farming company Ekosem-Agrar plans to raise money in Germany this year to finance further expansion of dairy farming in Russia, its joint chief executive said on Tuesday.
"The Russian milk market is greatly under-supplied and there is good growth potential there for coming years," said Wolfgang Blaesi. "We believe that in the next 10-15 years Russia will not achieve self sufficiency in milk."
The Russian government said on Jan. 31 that the country produced 31.7 million tonnes of milk in 2011 - down from 55.7 million tonnes in 1990.
Privately-owned Ekosem-Agrar has in the past five years invested about 100 million euros ($133 million) to create a dairy farming group on 160,000 hectares of farmland in south and central Russia with 28,000 cattle, including 10,400 dairy cows.