According to the latest data, the marginality of flour production in the Russian Federation has fallen significantly recently, so that producers are balancing around zero.
Dmitry Rylko, CEO of the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies, reported that flour producers have been making almost no profit from their operations lately.
Some are operating at a slight plus, some at breakeven, and some have already gone into the red.
The reasons for this state of affairs are that there is practically no preferential lending on the market now.
Given the incredibly high key rate of the Central Bank and rising costs, millers have practically nowhere to get money to even conduct operational activities.
The second important point is the low prices for flour that have been established at present, which do not allow producers to make a profit from the sale of their goods.
Finally, in general, the state of the flour milling sector in the Russian Federation is now far from ideal, because there are a large number of small companies in it.
They use technically imperfect means of production and often produce low-quality products, but offer them at very low prices, thereby preventing large flour producers from making a profit from selling their goods.
Bringing order to this sector, tightening requirements for flour quality, and monitoring the activities of small-scale production are also important tasks for the state, the solution of which would help restore the profitability of flour millers and provide consumers with higher-quality goods, experts say.
According to some experts, this situation as a whole could lead to mass bankruptcies in the flour milling sector in the near future.
Another consequence could be an increase in the price of flour in both wholesale and retail trade.
Despite the fact that this will hit the end consumer and increase, among other things, the cost of bread and baked goods in the country, producers have virtually no choice but to close production — and this will cause a shortage of flour and, again, lead to an increase in prices for it.
If the state wants to prevent such a development, it should intervene as soon as possible, analysts note, and first of all, provide the market with affordable, preferential loans.
At the same time, flour exports have also significantly decreased at the moment.
If last year, in August-December, the Russian Federation sent about 475 thousand tons of flour abroad, now this figure does not exceed 400 thousand tons.
