Vyacheslav Dudka (governor of the Tula region), Mikhail Ivantsov (chief executive of Leninsky municipal district), Antoine De-Saint-Affrique (executive vice president, Unilever) and Florin Trandafirescu (president of Inmarko Company) attended the groundbreaking ceremony.
The investment agreeing on construction of new production facilities was signed at the Third Tula Economic Forum on 10 October 2008. The project is considered to be one of the most significant Unilever investment projects in central and eastern Europe. The volume of investments will total $140m by the end of 2014. The new complex will cover more than 60,000 square metres and employ about 1,000 people. It will include ice cream production facilities, a chilled storage area and a logistics centre.
“I’m confident that this high-technology production complex being constructed in our region will make Tula the ice cream capital of Russia in the future”, said Vyacheslav Dudka. “The new plant capacity is planned to be around 120 million litres of end products. It’s also important that our ice cream, which will be produced of local milk and cream butter, will be distributed all over Russia and even exported.”
Inmarko is the acknowledged ice cream market leader in Russia. The new production centre in Tula will further strengthen the company’s market positions. The new production capacities will enable Inmarko to increase output as well as to essentially expand its ice cream distribution chain to the south, the centre and the northwest of Russia.
Source: Unilever Russia & Belarus
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