The portfolio meanwhile consists of 71 products, including fresh milk with different fat contents, organic milk, long-life milk, drinking and organic yogurt, desserts, kefir, sour cream, curd, butter, ice-cream and cheese. They are sold under the EkoNiva umbrella brand or as private labels, mainly in the European part of Russia and in Siberia. Over the past years, the EkoNiva brand has accounted for a continuously growing share in revenues, which most recently reached 77%.
The group almost doubled its sales of dairy products with Russia's largest federal retail chains. Sales to the Magnit chain, one of the country's leading retailers, increased sixfold thanks to the expansion of the product portfolio and increased geographical presence.
Sales also developed positively in the Lenta, Perekrjostok (part of the X5 Retail Group) and Auchan supermarket chains. In addition, EkoNiva dairy products are available in 37 own-brand stores.
In the HoReCa (hotel/restaurant/café) segment, the Ekosem-Agrar Group doubled the total number of its partners in 2021, and sales increased by around 330%. Since spring 2021, one of the most important HoReCa partners has been the fast-food chain McDonald's, the leading system catering chain in Russia. Other important partners are the catering facilities at Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo airports (both in Moscow) and Russia's largest airline, Aeroflot.
Online retailing is another important sales channel for the group, where additional platforms have been acquired as customers over the past two years. EkoNiva brand products can now be ordered via the delivery services Sbermarket and Sbermegamarket, Samokat, Delivery Club, igooods.ru, the online supermarket Perekrestok vprok, Ozon and Ozon Express, as well as Utkonos. Overall, sales through online channels more than tripled in 2021.
Stefan Dürr, chairman of the management board of Ekosem-Agrar AG, said, "In milk processing we have now reached the point where, thanks to the high demand for our products, our production capacities are fully utilized and we can concentrate on further increasing profitability with our own brand and selected private labels."
In the fourth quarter of 2021, two hard cheese varieties were added to the portfolio of the EkoNiva umbrella brand. The six-month aged hard cheese, named after company founder Stefan Dürr, has been available on the market since October 2021. The premium cheese is produced in the company’s own cheese dairy in the Voronezh region, which has a daily production capacity of 6 tons, including 2 tons of hard cheese.
