Kraft Foods has spent US$12m increasing the capacity of its chocolate manufacturing facility in Russia to build on growing sales in the country.
The US food giant invested the money at its site in the city of Pokrov, south-east of Moscow.
The production line installed at the plant has started producing Kraft chocolate brands, including Milka, Alpen Gold and Vozdushniy.
The line will produce up to four tonnes of chocolate tablets an hour with a packing machine packing 14 tablets a second. The move will make the Pokrov site Kraft’s largest chocolate plant globally.
A spokesperson for Kraft in Moscow told just-food today (19 July) that the company’s chocolate sales in Russia are on the rise. In 2006, Kraft sold 60,000 tonnes of chocolate in Russia, up from 51,000 a year earlier.

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By GlobalDataKraft has two production sites in Russia – the second is for coffee packaging – but the company is building a third facility, for freeze-dried coffee, which is going to be up and running by the end of the year.
Russia is a growing market for Kraft, the spokesperson said, with revenue standing at US$500m.