Baltika will buy the largest breweries in Chuvashia and Tatarstan – Vedomosti

Baltika declined to comment. Representatives of “Buket Chuvashia” and “Bulgarpiva” and the FAS did not respond to the newspaper’s request.

According to Infoline Analytics CEO Mikhail Burmistrov, the Bulgarpivo plant in Naberezhnye Chelny can be valued at approximately 700 million rubles. OJSC Buket Chuvashii, which is one of the largest producers of its own malt in Russia, was valued by investment banker Ilya Shumov at 2 billion rubles.

According to the Cheboksary publication Cheb.ru, in mid-October representatives of Baltika arrived at the Buket Chuvashia plant. The publication reported that the company planned to buy shares, but no final decision had been made. Now the company, founded in 1974, produces 8 million decaliters of beer per year, produces barley and rye malt and kvass and has its own chain of stores “Wild Elk”. The current owners of the company are not disclosed.

Bulgarpivo calls itself “the largest brewery in Zakamye.” The company’s capacity is about 13 million decaliters per year. The plant produces various types of beer and cider, as well as kvass, the sales of which in 2023, according to the company, amounted to more than 5.8 million decaliters. The company belongs to the deputy of the Chuvashia State Council Oleg Meshkov. In October 2023, the Federal Tax Service asked the Tatarstan Arbitration Court to declare the company bankrupt due to debts to the budget of 406.7 million rubles.

According to Vedomosti, the purchase of two new companies will increase Baltika’s share of the Russian beer market from 25% to approximately 26%. The brewing company itself produces around 620 million decaliters of beer per year and owns eight factories in different regions of Russia. By the end of 2024, Baltika will have approximately 36 billion rubles of cash left, so the acquisition of plants producing more than 21 million decaliters of beer per year seems logical, Shumov noted.

Earlier it became known that Baltika had registered the rights to the Zatecky Gus beer brand, which was previously produced by the company’s subsidiary in the Czech Republic. According to Kommersant, re-registering the trademark could serve as protection against claims by Carlsberg, which owns Baltika in 2014-2023.