Russian’s leading brewer Baltika, part of Danish Carlsberg brewing group is selling its 30% stake in a jointly owned 110,000 tons malthouse in St. Petersburg/Russia to majority shareholder Soufflet.
Soufflet, the world largest malting company already owns 69,97% of the shares of ЗАО Солодовенный завод Суффле Санкт-Петербург (Malting plant Soufflet St. Petersburg) through its subsidiary АО Компани интернасиональ де мальтери (International Malting Company). 0,3% belong to АОМальтери суффле (Malterie Soufflet) . The remaining 30% were so far owned by Baltika.
The crisis of the Russian beer industry (inside.beer, 18.2.2017) forces breweries to close plants and to divest of non-core activities like malting. Another major player in the market, Heineken, the number three brewer in Russia announced last year to close its 1 million hectoliter brewery in Kaliningrad by the end of last year (inside.beer, 14.10.2016).
In order to streamline its business, Carlsberg group already sold last year its own malting business named Danish Malting Group (DMG) with one malthouse in Denmark and two malthouses in Poland to Swedish maltster Viking Malt.
The purchase price or the St. Petersburg malthouse was not disclosed. However, total value of the company is estimated by financial adviser ГК Финам (Finam group) to be between 300 and 400 million Russian rubles ($5.3m-$7.1m). The 30% share has accordingly a value of about $1.6m – $2.1m.
Soufflet has a yearly worldwide malt production capacity of 2,28 million tons of malt and operates 26 malthouses predominantly in Europe and the Russian Commonwealth (CIS). The company operates only one malthouse in Russia, located in St. Petersburg. By far the leading malting group in Russia is Russky Solod with 4 malthouses and a combined yearly production capacity of more than 500,000 tons of malt. Because of the crisis of the Russian beer industry, the malthouses are not working at full production capacity.
