"Vičiūnų Group starts construction of salmon processing plant worth EUR 100 million

The „Vičiūnai Gruppe“ company „Vičiūnai ir partneriai“, one of the largest surimi and fish processing companies in Europe, partly controlled by the Mayor of Kaunas, starts the construction of a new €100 million salmon processing complex in Plungė.

The project will increase the company's salmon and salmonid processing capacity from 18,000 to 50,000 tonnes per year, increase its annual revenue from EUR 150 million to EUR 500 million, employ around 900 people and export more than 95 per cent of the company's production to Western Europe, the USA and other Western markets.„Vičiūnai ir partneriai“ said on Thursday.

„Due to the uncertainty and difficult geopolitical situation, large-scale greenfield production investments in Lithuania have recently decreased sharply, so an export-oriented project of this magnitude is of great significance for the country's economy as a whole,“ Dainius Matijošaitis, member of the board of directors of the„Vičiūnai Group“, said in a statement.  

The factory is being built next to the existing „Vičiūnų grupė“ factory in Plungė, with a site area of more than 13 hectares, and the total area of the new buildings exceeds 29,000 square metres. The area for production alone is more than 16,000 sqm, 4.5 times larger than the existing production unit. 

A 1.5 MW solar power plant will be installed on the roof of the building, natural gas will be eliminated from the processes, and all surplus energy will be used for space and water heating. 

„The new production solutions will not only allow us to significantly increase our production volumes, but also to expand our product range; the number of packaging types and methods will increase considerably, the number of fresh and frozen salmon products with spices will increase, and there will be new slicing methods, – said D. Matijošaitis. 

After the sale of the business in Russia, Belarus and other Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries in April last year, after a process that took almost two years, D. Matijošaitis told BNS in an interview that the deal would further expand the group's production base in Plungė. 

„The priority is a large salmon factory. We have designed a fairly large new salmon processing factory. We have ordered and bought equipment for it, some of which is in our warehouse and some of which is in the manufacturers' warehouses. And we have not started the building because we have stopped everything since February 2022," one of the group's executives told BNS at the time.

D. Matijošaitis said at the time that it would be a brand new, large and modern salmon processing factory, for which a site had already been cleared for construction in 20022, but the group was in financial trouble, with the banks refusing to lend to the group because of its Russian business, as they had valued the Russian business at zero on the balance sheet.

A year ago, a member of the board of directors of the Vichyun Group said that the estimated value of the project in 2020 was around €60 million, rising to €90 million in 2021, mainly due to the increase in the cost of the equipment.