An Auckland on-line vodka retailer is reportedly mounting an ambitious plan to invest up to $US35 million ($NZ49 million) constructing a beef processing plant in Maikop, a city 1600km south of Moscow in Russia.RVI New Zealand Ltd is reported by meat indus
An Auckland on-line vodka retailer is reportedly mounting an ambitious plan to invest up to $US35 million ($NZ49 million) constructing a beef processing plant in Maikop, a city 1600km south of Moscow in Russia.
RVI New Zealand Ltd is reported by meat industry website MeatInternational.com to be planning to construct the plant with loans from foreign banks, and to initially source meat from New Zealand and Australia.
The new plant will have a capacity to process about 4000 tonnes of meat per year, and construction is scheduled to finish by 2013.
It will import "semi-finished" meat from New Zealand and Australia but is expected to establish its own farms in Russia.
RVI was also planning to process New Zealand venison for markets in South Russia, the Caucasus region and Turkey.
Russian analysts were reported by the website as saying the project would take eight to 10 years to break even.
MeatInternational.com and another industry website Meattradenewsdaily described RVI NZ Ltd as "one of New Zealand's largest processors", even though the company itself said on its New Zealand website it was founded in 2007 to sell Russian vodka and also imports Baltika beer.
RVI's shareholders, on behalf of a trust, Andrew and Anastasia Barabash, were not listed by the Companies Office as directors or shareholders of big New Zealand meat processors.
Another person at the same Parnell address, Helen Barabash, owns Premium Land Investments Ltd, and is a director of Chaand Enterprise Ltd, owned by Stacey Barabash, and Andrew and Helen Barabash hold shares in Parnell Village Motor Lodge.
They were not available for comment.
