The Moscow office of Gide Loyrette Nouel (GLN) acted as an advisor to Rusmolco, a Russian dairy company, on a major investment project between Rusmolco and the Singapore company Olam International, the largest in the field of dairy cattle husbandry and plant growing. The project involves Olam International investing in the share capital of Rusmolco. It is planned that before 2015, the aggregate investments will amount to about USD 400 million and will be used for forming a herd of 20,000 head and increasing the area of farmland to 106,000 ha. During the following three or four years, it is planned to double the production volume by way of increasing the herd to 50,000 head, and the area of farmland to 130,000 ha.

The transaction was signed on 30 January 2012 in the presence of Yelena Skrynnik, Agriculture Minister of the Russian Federation, and Andrei Danilenko, Chairman of the Board of the National Dairy Producers Union (“Soyuzmoloko”). 

OOO Rusmolco was established in 2007. It comprises nine farms in the Penza Region and specialises in dairy cattle husbandry and plant growing. 

The Singapore company Olam International Limited is one of the world leaders in the production and delivery of agricultural products and ingredients for the food industry, trading in 65 countries. The company has been present in Russia since 1993. 

Boris Arkhipov, partner in the Moscow office of Gide Loyrette Nouel and head of the team of lawyers who acted on this project, said: “We were happy to represent the interests of Rusmolco in this project which opens further development possibilities for the company, as well as an opportunity to enter the international market. We have substantial experience in legal support of such kinds of transaction, including the industry in question, both on the Russian market and abroad. This project is characterised by the grand scale of the investments and a complicated structure. We would also like to congratulate Rusmolco on the fact that in the course of negotiations, we managed to observe the interests of our client in all matters of principle”.