Strategic challenges for the agriculture industry are the focus of attention of experts at Agroprodmash 2022
The conference programme of Agroprodmash 2022 was opened with the Russian Conference on Strategic Challenges of Agribusiness: Anti-crisis Solutions, Alternative Logistics, Raw Materials and Ingredients. The event is organised by EXPOCENTRE AO and KVK Imperia.
Opening the forum, Director General at KVK Imperia Andrey Podlesnov said that this year the food industry was facing new challenges. According to him, new threats have emerged and affect all systemic processes of any manufacturing business such as modernisation of development, supply of equipment, components and raw materials, logistics, product sales, and others. Today, the food industry accounts for more than 15% of this country's total industrial output. And at the household level, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center estimates that Russians spend 60% of their income on food. This means that the agriculture industry remains in demand in all periods of history.
The first analytical session was devoted to the trends and prospects for the dairy, meat, bakery and fish industries in the context of sanctions pressure and partial mobilization. Experts spoke about the impact of Russia's macroeconomic and financial performance on agribusiness enterprises, the economic and production trends that have come to the fore during the period of unprecedented sanctions, the main trends in Russians' consumer behaviour, and the practical aspects of import substitution in dairy, fish processing and bakery. The experts included founder and managing partner at the Neocon expert consulting company Denis Raksha, lead analyst at Dairy News Ekaterina Zakharova, Vice President at the Russian Bakers Union Dmitry Semenov, representative of the Romir research holding Elena Shilova, and analyst at Skylex Group Maksim Kuznetsov.
The second session was devoted to reconfiguring the ingredient matrix of food processing in the new economic, psychological and mobilisation realities. It was noted that up to 90% of ingredients in Russia were imported, while the meat, bakery, dairy and confectionary industries remained the main consumers. According to estimates by the Food Ingredients Producers Union, while in 2020 the Russian ingredient market exceeded 3 billion USD, of which more than 2.2 billion USD was imported, from March 2022 the picture has been changing dramatically: the deficit has been filled with supplies from friendly countries, domestic production has been reconfigured, and new ingredient projects have been initiated.
In separate sessions, the agribusiness experts also discussed how to maintain efficient food production during global crises, modernising the food industry at a critical point in history, and problems of logistics.
