July 11, 2012

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has become an owner of the largest sugar trader "Sucden"

Forbes reports that the former head of Kalmykia, FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has bought shares of Sucden Group companies - Russian branch of the largest sugar trader Groupe Sucres & Denrees in the world. The information was confirmed in RIA Novosti by the assistant of ex-president.

Ilyumzhinov signed the agreement after a meeting with the president of Sucden Serge Varsano and other shareholders of the company in Paris. The former president of Kalmykia became a leading owner of the sugar trader. Financial details of the deal were unkown.

With the help of the agreement Ilyumzhinov and Groupe Sucres & Denrees plan a global integration of agriculture in the CIS market. It is supposed that the basis of this complex will be operating plants of the company, but it’s planed the construction of new and modernization of existing enterprises with sugar beet processing capacity of 1 million tons annually.

It is planned to "create a comprehensive project that includes the entire technological process from cultivation of highly profitable crops to complete processing and any kind of transportation”, - Ilyumzhinov’s representative said. - " To the shareholders’ mind the construction of new logistics centers, parks for railway wagons, grain cars, container terminals and port infrastructure  will make the corporation the only agro-industrial company with a full-developed transport network which has no analogues in the world."

It is also expected that the project of the international agro-industrial corporations will attract large-scale investment in the region to expand the exploration of new land in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and other CIS countries, as well as significantly increase the cultivation of sugar beet, wheat, barley and other crops.

Sucden has been in Russia since 1994. The company consists of three sugar factories: "Tbilisi sugar factory" (Krasnodar region), "Dobrinsky Sugar Plant" (Lipetsk region) and "Atmis-Sugar" (Penza region) and three agricultural companies. The group is a major supplier of Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Mars, Nestle, Kraft Foods, Danone, Heineken, “SladKo", "Obedinennye conditery". "Sucden" is the largest sugar trader in Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Russia and implements its projects in many countries.