OJSC Cherkizovo Group, one of Russia's leading integrated and diversified meat producers, has announced the official opening of the first line of the poultry breeding facility at its Bryansk cluster.

The first line of the poultry breeding facility consists of 26 bird houses, with a combined capacity of almost 880,000 broilers. Bird houses will be populated with the Group’s own hatcheries, and equipped with state-of-the-art technologies that reflect the latest innovations and best practice in the field of poultry keeping.

The Company anticipates that the second line of the facility, incorporating a further 26 bird houses, will be launched in spring of 2011.

Investments in building the first and second lines at this facility total approximately US$29.5 million.

The first stage of the Bryansk capacity increase project involved building 11 additional bird houses at the existing poultry breeding facilities, and as previously announced, this has been completed. Further work currently underway includes the building of a new hatchery with an annual capacity of 66 million eggs. The Company anticipates that this will be launched in April 2011.

Both stages of the Bryansk project are expected to be completed in 2012. The current capacity of the Bryansk poultry cluster is 32,600 tonnes of live weight poultry meat, and after the completion of the entire capacity increase project this number will increase to 85,000 tonnes.

Sergey Mikhailov, CEO of Cherkizovo Group, commented: "Our investment programme is vital to achieving Cherkizovo's long term strategic objectives, and rigorous implementation is crucial. We are determined to maintain our leading position within Russia's poultry market, and the capacity increase projects at Bryansk underpins our strategy of improving production efficiency through the introduction of new technologies, while ensuring best-in-class compliance with world quality standards."