Source Fazer's business in Russia worked inefficiently due to local management decisions, said the new owner of the Finnish company's assets, Alexei Tulupov. He plans to abandon unprofitable goods, reducing the assortment by 2.5 times. Due to the fact that the head office of Fazer did not control employees in Russia, the company received less profit. This was stated in an interview with RBC by Alexei Tulupov, the owner of the Kolomensky bakery and confectionery holding, which in the spring of 2022 bought the Russian business of the Finnish company Fazer. 1997. As a result of the deal with Fazer, Kolomensky received three production sites in St. Petersburg and one in Moscow, which employed a total of 2.3 thousand people.
According to Tulupov, Fazer purchased raw materials for its production in Russia on average 10% more expensive than Kolomensky. “This happened because the Finns did not control the employees. I have my opinion that it was theft or idiocy, but it has not been proven by the court, ”said Tulupov. The entrepreneur claims that the Fazer site, which produced 1.5 times less than the Kolomenskoye site, employed 1.5 times more employees. “No wonder that the profit there was minimal,” Tulupov notes. RBC sent a request to a representative of Fazer.
The revenue of the parent company of the Finnish holding, OOO Khlebny Dom (formerly Fazer OOO), amounted to 14.1 billion rubles in 2021, net profit — 176 .6 million rubles Russia accounted for 13% of the Finnish holding's revenue. The revenue of Kolomenskoye, according to SPARK, amounted to 14.2 billion rubles, net profit – 776.5 million rubles. By the end of 2022, it should double, reaching 31.2 billion rubles, Tulupov predicts.
According to the businessman, short-sighted commercial decisions lead to the financial problems of bakery enterprises, first of all. Fazer Kolomensky plans to make the work of Russian factories more efficient – for this it is planned to reduce the number of so-called stock keeping units (SKUs) by 2.5 times. There will remain about 100 of them. “We will refuse products on which production did not earn, but lost money,” says Tulupov. When buying Fazer, the company turned out to have three times more product names than Kolomenskoye. “But this makes no sense, because each product needs to be promoted in order to be recognizable,” he says.
The new owner, on the contrary, will expand the production of certain goods. For example, it is planned to triple the production of Berry Basket desserts. “They had capacities [for the production of Berry Baskets] only 24% loaded. Just some financial crime!” Tulupov is surprised. In addition, it is planned to resume the production of frozen pizza at Fazer sites, as well as to develop the production of frozen semi-finished bread products, which can be supplied to chains, hotels and restaurants. , fell sharply, said at the beginning of 2022, the chairman of the board of the National Bakery Union, Sergei Shchedrin. In January 2022, Fazer even announced its intention to raise selling prices by 16–30% due to the rise in raw material prices.
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