Caviar is worth the candle

In 2000, two young entrepreneurs, Sergey Meshkov and Maksim Mostovoy, were approached by the latter's father, Ivan Mostovoy, with an unusual request. He wanted to save a Soviet-era fish farm in the area of ​​the village of Ukrainka, located in the Kyiv region - the fish farm was rapidly declining.

In the 1980s, Mostovoy Sr. raised sturgeons here and extracted black caviar from them. He reminded his son that at that time the bathroom in their apartment was littered with this delicacy. The father wanted to start the fish farm, and then, if the business turned out to be profitable, give it to his young partners.

Meshkov and Mostovoy Jr. created the Osetr company and, over a decade of work, turned the Soviet artifact into the largest national producer of black caviar. The last three years were especially successful, when the "milk yield" increased tenfold.

And this is not the limit. The domestic market for black caviar is huge, and the external one is limitless. Especially after international environmental organizations limited sturgeon fishing in the wild in the early 2000s and effectively banned the trade in their caviar harvested in the wild.

Gourmets' interest in the familiar delicacy is growing. "In America and Europe, the format of establishments where you are offered only two products - champagne and caviar - is very popular," says Elena Stolyarova, owner of the Kyiv restaurant Rybny Bazar. "In Ukraine, this is not very common yet, but who knows what will happen tomorrow."

Stolyarova does not know what will happen tomorrow, but she remembers well what happened yesterday. 95% of the black caviar market was smuggled, the remaining 5% was divided between more or less honest import suppliers. Such proportions made any development of aquafarming in Ukraine impossible.

Now the restaurateur notes that gray dealers of black caviar are losing ground. "First of all, because they cannot compete in terms of product quality or price," she explains. "Thanks to the development of caviar farming, Ukraine has a product of stable quality in large volumes."

Big Caviar

When asked by NV when they started doing caviar business, Meshkov jokes: "In the wild ones." Meshkov and Mostovoy's wild ones came in the early 2000s. At that time, the 25-year-old partners were already actively involved in business. After a short pause, they describe their business interests at that time as follows: "Real estate."

Today, the partners are still interested in more than just caviar: they trade in river sand, building materials, and rent out space.

The initial investment in the fish farm — {30 thousand — went toward buying feed and fish, initially mainly sterlet, then sturgeon. It took six years to raise them to childbearing age.

Meshkov studied all this time. He is a land surveyor by education and had nothing to do with ichthyology. "He never left his computer," Mostovoy says about his friend's "universities." "He began to comprehend a new science for himself using articles from the Internet."

Mostovoy himself also had a superficial knowledge of the fish business, although his father managed a fish farm in Ukrainka, and then a closed joint-stock company created on its basis. In the early 1990s, Mostovoy Jr. took the fish raised by his father to Kyiv for sale.

In 2006, these skills were not enough for success. The black caviar market was dominated by large importers from France, Italy, Germany, and the Baltics. In addition to money and hands, brains and experience were needed. And then Mostovoy Sr. turned to his old friend, the rector of the National Agrarian University, for help: he asked him to send talented students for an internship.

Marina Ploshko was just then studying in graduate school and ended up in a group studying sturgeons with the aim of further growing them and producing black caviar. "I had to travel a lot to Russia and Poland to study at the farms there," she recalls. As a result, Ploshko ended up in Ukrainka and became one of the leading employees at Mostovoy and Meshkov's farm.

Only 10 people work here permanently, servicing up to 40 thousand fish - 30 tons. In 2013, the company put 50 kg of caviar on the market, two years later - already 400 kg, becoming the largest national player. And in 2016, they plan to put 500 kg up for sale. This is twice as much as the main competitors - Bester and Biosila - produce together.

With an average cost of black caviar of $1 per 1 g, 500 kg means $0.5 million in annual turnover. Plus profit from selling the fish itself. The figures are solid, but the turnover of the initial capital in this business is slow - about 10 years.

The sterlet produces its first caviar in the sixth or seventh year of life, and sturgeon - in the eighth or tenth. At a time, the sterlet produces 250 g of caviar, and the sturgeon - up to 1.5 kg. Adults spawn once every two years. And from that moment on, the business begins to smile.

The largest expense item in this business is feed. In Ukraine, they are 100% imported. The little that is produced in Dnepropetrovsk, says Ploshko, is not of good quality for serious manufacturers. They have to spend currency: about $40 thousand per year to feed 40 thousand sturgeons. About the same amount is spent on other expenses. In total, the partners have already invested in the project

about $ 1 million.

The peak of the industry's profitability came last year, when Ukrainian producers of black caviar demonstrated a record "harvest" in the entire history of independence.

Tetiana Yakovleva, head of the aquaculture, selection and scientific support department of the Department of Protection of Use of Aquatic Bioresources and Regulation of Fisheries of Ukraine, claims that three large national producers - Oster, Biosila and Bester - have already approached the 800 kg mark of black caviar through joint efforts. And next year they are capable of reaching 1 ton.

Stolyarova assures NV that since September of last year her restaurant has switched to Ukrainian-made caviar. "I used to use Russian caviar," says the owner of the capital's Rybny Bazar restaurant. "Now all Russian caviar is contraband."

Throwing in the Black Way

According to the State Fisheries Agency, legal imports of black caviar to Ukraine in 2015 barely exceeded 79 kg. But the real flow, according to industry representatives, exceeds this figure by hundreds of times.

The situation worsened in 2009, when all sturgeons were included in the Red Book: their catch in industrial quantities is prohibited. The Caspian countries — Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran — were among the last to join the world community in this matter.

Previously, up to 95% of caviar came to the Ukrainian market from smugglers, who, in turn, brought it from Kerch and Astrakhan, says Stolyarova. "This caviar was obtained from wild fish during its spawning period," she explains.

Dmitry Borisov, the owner of a chain of restaurants bearing his own name, was selling black caviar five years ago. And even had a share in the Latvian company Mottra — the world's largest farm-based producer of this delicacy. He remembers well how it was, and has an idea of ​​how it is now.

According to Borisov's calculations, the volume of the black market in Ukraine in the early 2000s reached 72 tons per year. The restaurateur assumes that the situation has not changed much these days. "If you go to the Bessarabsky market, 80% of the women will pounce on you: do you want caviar?" he says. "They will dump five tin cans of 2-3 kg each on you and even let you try this terrible barbiturate caviar."

According to Borisov, up to 1 ton of the delicacy is sold monthly at this one Kiev market alone. "The black market for caviar is still black," he sums up.

Even experts do not know the real volume of poached and contraband caviar on the grocery shelves of Ukraine.

In the summer of 2015, the OSCE, together with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), announced a recruitment of volunteers to go to Ukrainian retail chains, markets and photograph jars of black caviar. "It was important for us to understand how widespread the problem is," says Natalia Gozak, a representative of WWF Ukraine.

Legal products were distinguished from illegal ones by their packaging. Each jar must be certified by the international environmental organization CITES, which is part of the UN. Only this sign gives permission for the legal export of products and guarantees their quality and safety.

Now WWF knows that the problem is widespread. But they still do not have exact figures.

Yarema Kovaliv, head of the State Agency of Fisheries of Ukraine, admits that illegal sturgeon fishing and the extraction of black caviar in the wild are still a big headache for the agency. "Our fisheries protection service has not yet fully worked through this situation," the young official shrugs. "It is difficult to control."

As a result, Meshkov claims, he often encounters poached caviar in retail outlets and bazaars. The businessman warns: such a delicacy is dangerous to health. "We periodically buy this caviar and send it to the lab for analysis," he says. "There we find golden staphylococcus, and bacilli."

Poachers and smuggling are killing a promising industry, but Meshkov and Mostovoy are not giving up. They unanimously assure that the demand for the official product still significantly exceeds the legal supply.

Borisov knows about this too. "All the fish restaurants and food bars [of the Borisov family], where there is a caviar bar on the menu, sell about 1 ton per year," says the restaurateur. This is twice the production capacity of the partners from Ukrainka.

Meshkov and Mostovoy assure that they will soon be able to satisfy Borisov's needs. Their company will soon reach a production volume of up to 3 tons per year.

The prospects of the caviar business are tempting. And that is why a separate industry for sturgeon farming has been growing around it in recent years, and fish farms have been appearing. "We hope that this market will be in demand," says Vladimir Osipchuk, director of the recently created Odessa sturgeon farming complex.

Alexander Paskhover