Russia: Cherkizovsky rebrands to form company synergy

Cherkizovo Group’s flagship brand in meat processing, Cherkizovsky, has received an updated name and logo as of August 2014.

Now all of the company’s sausage products, hams, delicatessen, vacuum packed chilled meat, and other products of the Cherkizovsky Meat Processing Plant will be called “Cherkizovo”. The logo placed on the products has also been updated. The updated Cherkizovo brand will emphasise the link between processed meat products and the company’s agribusinesses, since the Group’s main competitive advantage is making sausages out of meat from its own Cherkizovo farms.

The slogan “Quality from farm to fork” also underlines this, and it will be the focus of marketing communications. “We control all the links in the agricultural chain,” said Sergei Mikhailov, CEO of Cherkizovo Group, commenting on the rebranding. “We grow wheat and corn on our farmlands in Voronezh, Orel, and Lipetsk Regions, and this grain goes to our own feed mills. We are almost completely self-sufficient in feed, which guarantees biological security of our livestock. We breed more than 200 million broilers and more than one and a half million head of pigs every year. This means our meat processing plants receive farm-fresh chilled meat that has undergone strict veterinary control.”

Cherkizovsky Meat Processing Plant located in Northeast Moscow was founded in 1974. Igor Babaev (at present, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Cherkizovo Group) headed the enterprise in the mid-1990s. Babaev upgraded the plant and started expanding marketing and sales. Realizing the need to substitute imports on the food markets, Babaev and his team bought and upgraded poultry farms and pork complexes, feed mills and agribusinesses, and built new ones from the ground up. They established AIC Cherkizovsky and AIC Mikhailovsky, which in 2005 were merged into Cherkizovo Group, the future leader of the country’s agricultural sector. It is worth noting that the logo on the products of Cherkizovo Meat Processing Plant bears a stylized anagram of Babaev’s initials, “I.B.”. This follows a centuries-old tradition of Russian manufacturers who put their name on their products as a guarantee of quality.

Today, more than 300 products are manufactured under the Cherkizovo brand (formerly Cherkizovsky), including sausages, ready-to-cook products, vacuum packed chilled meat, cold cuts, delicatessen, and more. Products of this brand have received recognition from experts, retailers, and consumers, and have been granted numerous awards for quality, including “Product of the Year”, “100 Best Goods of Russia”, and medals and diplomas from the Prodexpo and World Food exhibitions.