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Pitch Sessions Held for Top Projects on Investinregions.ru Portal at SPIEF

8 June 2021
Питч-сессии топ проектов портала Investinregions.ru на ПМЭФ: как это было

Pitch sessions were made for projects posted on the Investment Portal of Russian Regions Investinregions.ru at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. The founders and heads of companies presented 11 standout initiatives to banks, investors, and major industry companies – from a surf park with artificial waves in the Krasnodar Region and tourist clusters in Kuzbass to a leather processing plant in Kalmykia.

“We have made the portal a useful resource and tool for convenient work with investment projects from the regions. The portal is in Russian, English, and Chinese since we aren’t only targeting Russian investors, but international investors as well. International and Russian banks, companies, and public organizations have already become partners of the portal today. Our strategy is to create an ecosystem based on the portal to attract investment to the regions,” said Alexandra Beloshitskaya, Executive Director of Fund RC-Investments, the investment platform of the Roscongress Foundation, who moderated the event.

Denis Saly, Director of the Representative Office of the Kaliningrad Region under the Russian Government, presented a concept for the development of Oktyabrsky Island in Kaliningrad. Almost half of the site – 179 hectares – is being urbanized. The payback period is 54 months. The internal rate of return is 24.9%. The profitability index is 1.3 times. The discount rate is 12.9%. Oktyabrsky Island will be built up as an eco-friendly and comfortable space with well-developed infrastructure for life, development, and business in the Kaliningrad Region, and the existing benefits and preferences could significantly ease the tax burden during the implementation of this investment project.

Roman Mataru presented his own startup Aensof.com – a global B2B trading platform with 185,000+ SKUs that can connect 25 million companies of sellers and buyers of polymers, petrochemicals, and chemicals. In the next five years, the startup plans to attain turnover of USD 500+ million per year and an NPV of USD 129+ million.

Savr Dambayev, the head of a project to build a leather processing plant in Kalmykia, called on investors to enter the natural leather market. The facility will be able to process up to 252,000 skins of small horned livestock and up to 40,000 cattle. It will be able to supply products for the manufacturing of clothing, footwear, and bags, and also for the automotive, furniture, and aviation industries.

Intersen-Plus, a resident of the Skolkovo Innovation Centre, produces disinfectants and packaging materials for sterilization. Its clients include Russian Railways, Sheremetyevo International Airport, X5 Retail Group, EMERCOM of Russia, and the Moscow Metro. CEO Dmitry Kurshin said its revenue reached RUB 1.6 billion in 2020 as a result of the pandemic, which is almost six times more than in 2019.

Vyacheslav Momot gave an inspiring presentation about the creation and development of the Mezhdurechensk Tourism Cluster. The project is divided into four investment sites – Mount Yugus, Black Salan, Podnebesnyye Zubya, and Siberian Megaliths. The site offers a diversified infrastructure of resorts, with clusters of science, medicine, health, sports, and culture for sustainable capacity both in winter and in summer. The large system of interconnected eco-resorts will become a year-round centre for family, team-based, and corporate recreation with components of extreme sports and recreational, leisure, and ethnic tourism for Russians and foreigners.

Andrei Domozhirov presented the Wave Lagoon park that generates artificial waves that are just as good as ocean waves. It is capable of simultaneously accommodating up to 140 surfers in constantly purified water, with a surf school, a sports training base for surfers preparing for the Olympic Games, youth entertainment centre, as well as a proper beach infrastructure. The eco-friendly, virtually silent, high-tech, and ultra-modern electrical equipment produce more than 1,000 waves per hour at a height of more than 2.5 metres, with the ability to recover and reuse part of the energy.

Another tourism project was the Novy Sheregesh ski complex presented by Nikita Slesarenko. The resort will be able to host families with children and IT workers who will spend several months there as well as young people at hostels that are to be built for them on the territory. Sheregesh has unique natural features: 120 days of sunshine per year on average, seven months of snow cover that is 1.5 to 4 metres thick, a range of elevation from 300 to 680 metres with the highest point being Mustang at 1570 metres.

Vladimir Farafontov spoke about the resort potential of the northern part of Kuzbass. He surprised investors with a project for a northern balneological hub at the largest reservoir in the region – Lake Bolshoy Berchikul – with enormous reserves of curative mud. The hub would become a centre for water and event tourism with a yacht club, glamping park, detox centre, and a children’s camp.

Yulia Malorodnova presented a project for the development of the Kremnievy Termy balneological spa resort in the Krasnodar Territory. A hotel and shopping centre, family hotel, health resort, and two cottage villages will be built around the spa areas and the medical centre. Once it reaches full capacity, the tourism cluster will be able to accommodate up to 2,500 visitors a day.

The event concluded with a presentation by Savr Pavlov of a project for a production site in the coastal part of the North Caspian for the processing of roughage based on a reed-cereal grass mixture. The facility would produce pelleted feed, which will optimize farmers’ expenses on feed preparation for the wintering period and stimulate the development of agriculture in Kalmykia.