Rosspirtprom Company Suggests Reducing Number Of Alcohol Plants

The Rosspirtprom state company suggests that the number of alcohol plants in Russia should be reduced by 5 times, and 100% of the excise tax should be collected for alcohol instead of alcohol products. Nikolai Koryazhkin, deputy general director of Rosspirtprom, announced this information in an interview with RBC. According to him, there are about 125 alcohol plants in Russia now, and in fact, 25 plants are enough to fulfill the demand of the industry. Nonetheless, measures to reduce the number of such enterprises will require reconstruction of facilities and development of a system of grain elevators belonging to plants. "Grain makes up about 70% of the cost of alcohol, but losses resulting from bad storage conditions reach 20% of the volume (of grain) received by plants," Koryazhkin explained. In Koryazhkin's view, it will be possible to remodel closed alcohol plants to produce wines and other beverages whose production in Russia is insufficient, so as to reduce the volume of wine import. He also pointed out that the real demand for alcohol of Russia's manufacturers of alcohol products reaches 48 million decaliters a year, and Russia's total demand for alcohol is 63 million decaliters. At the same time, alcohol plants in which Rosspirtprom is responsible for managing some blocks of shares produce 90% of alcohol enough to meet the demand of the alcohol industry and about 80% of Russia's total demand. Rosspirtprom believes that alcohol plants will be able to guarantee collection of the excise tax, and accordingly, in Koryazhkin's view, it is expedient to collect 100% of the excise tax for alcohol instead of final alcohol products.