Russia may need to follow the lead of Belarus and create a state corporation for feed additive production to reduce dependency on imports, Valery Afanasiev, president of the Russian Union of Feed Manufacturers, said during the recent Compound Feed 2025 industry conference in Moscow.
Russian firms meet around 70% of domestic demand in lysine and 30% to 50% of demand in feed methionine, but in other segments the country almost entirely relies on imports, Afanasiev said, admitting that the progress in import substitution in recent years has been sluggish.
"As we calculated, the financial profitability of building [feed additive] plants is very low. The payback period is close to 15 years, which makes business extremely cautious," Afanasiev said.
Besides, the Russian market is rather small, meaning new ventures in feed additive production will lack economy of scale.
To get the ball rolling on import replacement, Afanasiev suggested Russia can follow the example of Belarus, where feed additive production is managed by the Belarussian National Biotechnological Corporation (BNBC).
Afanasiev expressed optimism about the potential benefits of establishing a similar state corporation in Russia. He described it as “the right path”, forecasting that it would enable the country to fully meet domestic demand and “stop running around the world with an outstretched hand”.
Not everyone agreed with the proposed initiative. Sergey Mikhnyuk, executive director of the Russian Feed Union, for instance, reminded that BNBC is not a truly state corporation. "The project implemented in Belarus is a commercial project by a commercial organization with the involvement of Chinese technologies and Chinese financing," he said, adding that BNBC is yet to kick off feed vitamin production.
Besides, Mikhnyuk continued, establishing a state corporation is not a silver bullet against the existing market problems, adding that there were examples when such corporations were not successful in terms of spent budget funds and time, citing Russian nanotechnological corporation Rusnano as one such case.
