December 15, 2011

The first RUB2.8 billion (US$88.1 million) tranche of a credit line provided by Russian Agricultural Bank has been taken out by Russia's Russkoye More Group to organise production of Atlantic salmon at nine sites in the Barents Sea in the Arctic, the bank said Tuesday (Dec 13).

The total size of the credit line was not provided.

The planned volume of production amounts to around 25,000 tonnes of fish per year, or 20% of Russia's total red salmon imports. The project would help the Russian commercial fishing industry become one of the strategic segments of food production in the next couple of years, the bank said.

Russkoye More, or Russian Sea, owns a fish and seafood processing plant in the Moscow Region city of Noginsk. The company supplies its products to the domestic market and to other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States.