Russian Agriculture Minister Nikolai Fedorov visited the Smolensk region

Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, Nikolai Fyodorov arrived in the Smolensk region on July, 23. The purpose of the Agriculture Minister’s visit is to control the situation related to African swine fever, as well as inspecting the results of the regional program for developing flax production and processing industry in agriculture. Governor Alexey Ostrovskiy gave the Minister the necessary explanations.

During his visit to the Smolensk region the Minister of Agriculture visited OOO "New Village", the main activity of which is processing milk and producing dairy products.

According to CEO, Nina Antonova, the company’s production capacity allows to process 10 tons of milk per shift (2,800 tons per year). For the first six months of 2013 419.1 tons of milk for a total of about 12.0 million rubles have been processed.

Next Nikolai Fyodorov visited Vyazemsky Flax Plant, which is part of "Vyazemsky Machine Plant". The company also includes OOO "Andreykovsky collective farm", OOO "Novoselsky collective farm", OOO "TERRA", OOO "Vyazemsky flax plan", OOO "Mercury VMZ", OOO "Lentehnomash", OOO «Union-BM".

In 2009, the plant initiated a pilot project for the production of blended yarn with a high content of flax fiber. Currently, there is mass production of blended yarn performed according to the classical scheme of cotton spinning and employing Swiss and German equipment as well as manufacturing a wide range of textile products of domestic purposes.

While talking to the Minister, CEO of the Company Vladimir Kupriyanov said that in 2012 the plant processed 2,446 tons of flax fiber, produced 1,668 tons of yarn, 188 million meters of fabric and tarpaulin. The sales revenue amounted to 175 million rubles, and the profit amounted to 7 million rubles. Nikolai Fyodorov highly praised the effective work of the plant staff.