Yug Rusi makes PET preforms for vegetable oil bottles

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (centre) on a visit to a Yug Rusi oil bottling plant with group owner Sergei Kislov (left).

A leading Russian agro industrial group, Yug Rusi is continuing to invest in the modernisation of its bottled vegetable oil business as it grows its packaging production.

During 2016, the group based in south western Russia, is spending around €3.87m on construction and renovation at its Labinskiy oil processing plant in the Krasnodar region.

The project has included the construction of a boiler room with new boilers to replace outdated units, aimed at reducing emissions of harmful substances into the atmosphere. Other modernisation work will cover electrical and automation equipment.

The Labinskiy facility is also growing the output of its recently installed plant to produce injection moulded PET preforms and bottle closures to provide packaging for its own oil product range.

Its 1,000 square metre moulding hall has the daily capacity to turn out up to 700,000 preforms for 1-litre bottles and 130,000 5-litre containers for vegetable oil. The building, which began operating with a 19 strong workforce, is equipped with injection moulding machines supplied by Husky.

Preforms are not only used by the Labinskiy operation for its own products but are shipped to a number of other bottled vegetable oil and oilseed plants run by the Yug Rusi holding company across the south west of Russia.

Yug Rusi group is Russia’s number one vegetable oil producer supplying around 30% of its vegetable oil market and 20% of the market in Kazakhstan, where it has a processing plant. The firm, with a turnover approaching €1.84bn, is also a major exporter of bottled and bulk vegetable oil and grain from its 19 farms across the Krasnodar, Rostov and Volgograd regions.

Yug Rusi exports to the CIS nations as well as to Germany, the Czech Republic, Georgia, the Baltic States and as far as Afghanistan and Mongolia.