Russia's finest rewarded at equipment show
processing machinery suppliers were recognised at the AgroProdMash
2004 exhibition which took place in Moscow recently, underlining
Russia's commitment to improving its processing capabilities.
The competition was organised with the assistance of Russia's Agriculture Ministry, Ministry of Industry and Energy, the State Standard Commission of Russia and other state institutions and scientific organisations, a sign of the importance of this particular sector of the food industry to the country's economy.
Some 28 Russian and foreign companies took part in the competition, with the jury asked to chose between 35 different equipment products.
The main prize was awarded to Intermik-Rustech for a meat mixer, and the same company also won the gold medal for sanitary and hygiene equipment. A number of companies were awarded gold medals for their equipment, including Agros, for a meat smoking chamber, and Russkaya Trapeza for its RT-UM-GSh packaging machine.
Experimental Plant Polyus won gold, silver and bronze awards for its range of Viera chilled display cabinets, while Snezh won a bronze medal for its 400 cubic litre chiller cabinet.
Perhaps reflecting the desire of the Russian authorities to take a more active role in added value areas of the food industry, another grand prize was awarded to OKB Oskon for its automated production process for dairy proteins - an important niche market within the dairy sector and one with significant potential for growth, particularly in areas such as sports nutrition products.
More than 650 companies and organizations from 26 countries took part in the exhibition, which was visited by over 400,000 delegates.
Vera Zhuravleva, director of the AgroProdMash 2004 exhibition, told Cee-foodindustry.com: "Every year, AgroProdMash features a wide range of equipment for processing, packaging, transporting and storing all kinds of food products. We also feature cooling equipment for food processors and retailers, as well as instrumentation and automation equipment for food producers.
"This is our ninth exhibition, and since its first edition a decade ago, AgroProdMash has become the biggest food processing equipment show in eastern Europe."
But while Zhuravleva claimed that just taking part in the competition is honour enough for most companies, the competitors themselves are not completely convinced.
"For us, participation in the contest was simply a means of singing our own praises and nothing more," Anatoly Trapeznikov, director of Polyus, told Cee-foodindustry.com.
"There is no practical benefit to the winner. We have got three medals and three certificates and they are lying in the cabinet at our technical department. Our products are for industrial use, and people in the industry will not be impressed by medals - they want to see and use the machinery for themselves and test that it works in real life.
"So while the victory itself will not increase our number of contracts, we do at least know that our cooling equipment, which we sell everywhere from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, is considered to be of good quality."
But that does not mean that the show itself was a waste of time - far from it. "We will certainly participate in the exhibition again next year - it has been very useful," Trapeznikov said. "I am not sure about the contest, though. Perhaps we will, if we are in the right mood.".
