OREANDA-NEWS. October 17, 2011. Akmetov's SCM Group has chosen a manager for development of its new business area - agriculture. It is Sergey Zuzak, who used to work in the metal and mining division of the Group as well as for Horizon Capital. Experts are confident that despite lack of experience in agrarian business Mr Zuzak will be able to complete restructuring of the Company's agricultural assets. In addition, the company needs his knowledge and expertise to purchase new assets, they add. 

Sergey Zuzak will head the agrarian business of System Capital Management. As the SCM press office reported yesterday he will represent the interests of SCM in the Supervisory Board of HarvEast and his responsibility will include the issues of strategy, investment, finance and risks. "Agriculture is a new business for us. That's why we decided to strengthen our position in this new business and introduce a new post of SCM Director of Agricultural Business Development offering it to Sergey Zuzak," noted SCM CEO Oleg Popov. CFO Dmitriy Skornyakov will stay the acting CEO of HarvEast and thus will keep two positions, SCM said.

HarvEast was established in this June by SCM and a Group's partner Smart Holding (a co-owner of Metinvest) of Vadim Novinskiy and Andrey Klyamko. The company manages the agrarian assets of Mariupol Ilyich Steel Plant, which SCM acquired last year. The land bank of HarvEast totals 220,000 ha, which puts the company in the top 5 list of agrarian companies, according to the Director of AAA consulting firm Sergey Nalivka. In addition, the assets of the company include farms (over 30,000 head of cattle as well as pig breeding farms), compound feed and seed crop production facilities. HarvEast has a bread-baking plant, several flour plants, two compound feed plants and one canned food plant.

Sergey Zuzak has never worked in agrarian business before. From 1999 to 2003 he was a specialist of Creditanstalt Investment Bank and then took the position of an investment manager of Horizon Capital, where he stayed until 2010. Then he joined SCM as an investment manager in the department of mining and metals business development. "Still, he worked with agrarian companies at Horizon Capital. In addition, he has strong record in corporate governance," explained the press office of SCM. Horizon Capital was a shareholder of Inkerman, Agro-Soyuz and Vitmark in different years.

According to the Board Chairman of Eavex Capital Yuriy Yakovenko, HarvEast will likely to increase the land bank, especially after removal of the land purchase moratorium. "SCM wants to take the agrarian holding up to a high level to be able to sell it or to go for IPO. If the Company wants to expand its agrarian business they need a manager who knows the capital market and can ensure transparency of business," says CEO of BG Capital Nick Piazza. Earlier Mr Skornyakov stated that HarvEast will focus on crop raising and dairy production. The company plans to expand the dairy production and start exporting grain crops. Yuriy Yakovenko is confident that SCM will easily find specialists in the agrarian business: "Ukraine has many agrarian specialists. The company rather needs the manager for business restructuring." HarvEast is going to divide the existing 72 farms into 19 agrarian clusters and upgrade the existing assets.