September 1, 2010

Estonia's Tallegg sells 108 tonnes chicken toes to Asia

AS Tallegg, an Estonian-based poultry producer, has sold 108 tonnes of chicken toes to the Asian market in August.

Overall, the export shares in the company's sales have grown to 30%, executives said Tuesday (Aug 31).

CEO Teet Soorm said the Estonian market was too small for Tallegg to remain competitive internationally. Tallegg expects its export turnover this year to reach 150 million kroons (US$12.17 million).

"Producing chicken toes has been an interesting and hopefully successful project for us, among many others," said Soorm.

The overall focus of export activity by Tallegg remains on selling high quality chicken fillet to Scandinavia and boosting its market share in Latvia and Lithuania, the director in charge of operations, Margus Venelainen, said. On the Latvian market, Tallegg sells more than 400 tonnes of poultry meat per month on a stable basis.

"To Asian countries we intend to sell chicken wings seasonally and now also chicken toes, hopefully around the year," said Venelaine.

Tallegg is a company of the HKScan group, a food producer listed on the Helsinki stock exchange. Tallegg raised 8.6 million broilers, produced 75 million eggs and sold 18.2 million kilogrammes of poultry meat and products during 2009. Its sales totalled 688 million kroons (EUR 44 million) and the number of employees was 470.