Bonduelle says site in Russia's Belgorod hit by attacks in June, no casualties (updated)

Bonduelle SA

26/06/2023 14:27

(Add context and details in paragraphs 3 to 7)
    By Diana Mandia
       June 26 (Reuters) - French food company Bonduelle's
 BOND.PA  frozen vegetables site in Russia's Belgorod region was
hit by attacks earlier this month, the group said on Monday,
adding there had been no casualties among employees.
    "The bombing raids at the beginning of June in the Belgorod
region on the Russian-Ukrainian border hit our Shebekino
industrial site," a spokesperson for the group told Reuters.
There were no casualties among employees and the damage was
limited. 
    Bonduelle had halted production at the Shebekino plant,
about 7 km (4 miles) from the Ukrainian border, in the autumn
for security reasons.
    The French group said it had decided to temporarily
subcontract a very minor part of its activities at the site "to
be able to pack existing vegetable stocks and avoid any wastage"
without further elaborating. 
    The site was not at risk of expropriation by the Kremlin,
Bonduelle said, a scenario that is increasingly worrying
analysts.
    Bonduelle has been operating in the top growing regions of
Ukraine and Russia since the 1990s. Its two other Russian plants
are in Timashyovsk and Novotitarovskaya, in the Krasnodar region
near the Black Sea. 
    "We believe that the Russian business is the group's most
profitable, and an exit would clearly be catastrophic for the
group," Mid Cap's analyst Florent Thy-Tine said in a note to
clients last week. 
    Before the war, revenue in Russia and in peripheral
countries accounted for around 150 million euros ($165 million)
or 5% of Bonduelle's total revenue.
    A statement on the company's website says it has suspended
all investment projects in Russia since Moscow's invasion of
Ukraine, and had decided to dedicate all of its profits from
sales in Russia to the future reconstruction of Ukraine. 
 ($1 = 0.9159 euros)

 (Reporting by Diana Mandiá; Editing by Alison Williams, Kirsti
Knolle and Alex Richardson)
 ((diana.mandiaalvarez@thomsonreuters.com))