The meat processing industry (Slaughtering and Processing)

One problem for meat-enterprises over the recent years has been feedstock recourses. Many domestic slaughterhouses and processors have a technology backlog because a lot of uncertainties, as the industry are suffering from the consequences of bird flu, price politics, illegal imports and export and the instable export situation. Currently pork takes about one-third share in structure of meat production in animal industries of Ukraine (Hess et al., 2009).

A significant product deficit led to extremely high domestic prices for red meat and consumption shifted to less expensive poultry products

(www.thebeefsite.com/articles/1670/ukraine-insufficient-production-and- insignificant-imports). Under such conditions, the meat processors find it more profitable to use imported feedstock (including smuggled sold at dumping prices) in order to reduce the cost of feedstock processing and increase profitability of production (http://www.proagro.com.ua/eng/art/4015922.html). Furthermore, using the low purchasing capacity of Ukrainian population, many meat-processing enterprises consciously use cheap imported feedstock to manufacture cheap cooked sausages.

In the condition of transition to a market economy, the national meat processing branch came to brink of survival. During the recent years the dynamic increase of investments to Ukrainian food processing industry and in meat packing in particular, promoted restoration of ready-made meat products manufacturing. Such growth is reinforced by growth of revenues of urban population, which are major consumers of processed meat products and meat itself. Restoration of normal operations of meat packing industry enterprises and relatively low purchasing capacity of population gave rise to increase of

demand for safe cheap raw meat of proper quality in industrial scale volumes on Ukrainian market (http://ukrexport.gov.ua/eng/economy/ukr/168.html).

One example of a profitable meat processing company in Ukraine is the Myronivsky meat processing plant, a leading organization on the Ukrainian market. The Myronivsky meat processing plant, known under the subsidiary name of Lehko (organic products are marketed under this brand name), is one of the production departments of CJSC Myronivsky Khliboproduct, more well-known for the manufacturing of feeds and cereals and poultry processing. The new state-of-the-art plant is currently the largest Ukrainian semi-finished meat products enterprise and is the only one of its kind in the Ukraine.

The construction of the facility at one of the company’s farms was started in October 2004 and was completed by December 2005. The outfitting of the facility with

manufacturing equipment was carried out during 2006 and production was started in March 2006. The facility was constructed on a 4.3 Hectare Greenfield site about 120 km from Kiev and required an initial estimated investment of €17.8m. The demand for products from the factory immediately outstripped its production capacity and in February 2007 more processing capacity was added. The factory was constructed and outfitted by Myronivsky Khliboproduct with support from the Dutch company CFS. In March 2006, the factory was equipped with five industrial lines with a general capacity of 120t per day. The production lines included ready product lines, raw product lines; marinated poultry manufacture lines, minced meat manufacture lines and prepared dinner lines. The facility manufactures convenience products from chicken, beef and pork using raw material which is sourced exclusively from the farms of Myronivsky Khliboproduct; in particular, Agricultural LLC Druzhba Narodiv and the poultry farms Peremoga Nova and Oril-Leader.

The facility employs 179 workers. The opening of the plant in 2006 was a great success and immediately plans were made to expand. By February 2007 two new industrial lines were established at the plant, allowing an increase in capacity of up to 140–150t of convenience meat products per day. The product range is adjusted according to the demand from supermarkets and suppliers and, in the future, the product range of the plant could be expanded to 100 SKUs (stock keeping units). Future plans at the moment

export. The Myronivsky convenience food plant has a capacity of 140–150t per day and will increase production in the future up to 240t per day of packed poultry, pork, and red meat products. The products will be distributed within the Ukraine and sold under the Lehko brand name. The facility is now one of the most advanced in the meat

packing/processing industry and was the result of a joint effort by Myronivsky Khliboproduct and the Dutch company CFS

(http://ukrexport.gov.ua/eng/economy/ukr/168.html).

Positive trends that became visible in the pig breeding complexes in last year’s had a significant impact on the growth of production of pork by meat-processing enterprises. The majority of meat-processing enterprises demonstrated positive figures for all Ukrainian regions. From territory point of view the largest pork production facilities concentrate in the regions with developed pig farm breeding namely in Donetsk,

Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Cherkasy and Zaporizhia regions. The positive changes can be explained not only by the high level of live pig purchases but also by the fact that some meat-processing enterprises have large fattening farms, including pig farms

(www.proagro.com.ua). Other meat plants on the country belong to big vertically integrated holdings that have compound feed plants in their structure (for example, Agro-Souze, Vira 1 and Kalyta).

Ukraine has everything needed to facilitate the production of high-quality meat

products. These conditions include suitable climate, revival of the meat packing industry and related increase of demand for the raw stock, growing purchasing power of the population and as a result higher demand for meat and its products on the retail market, aggressive development of chains of retail trade enterprises, which improves the

channels of product distribution, as well as the availability of skilled staff and relatively cheap labour (http://ukrexport.gov.ua/eng/economy/ukr/168.html).