OJSC PAVA (www.apkhleb.ru), the largest grain processor of Siberia and the Far East, made its first announcement about the decision to construct an advanced wheat-based processing plant in the spring of 2007. After a series of business negotiations and a study of the market conjuncture, the company confirmed the final plan of the plant capacities. According to this plan, the outputs of the new production will be vital wheat gluten, starch, syrups, farm animals feed, carbon dioxide, wheat germ oil and alcohols of different grades.

To implement the project of constructing an advanced wheat-based processing plant, apart from investing its ownership capital, the company will also have to take out a loan. There is an officially approved, standard financing structure of such projects, but it is rather complicated and therefore the company faced a necessity to collaborate with an organization that has solid experience in corporate and project finance and thus could become PAVA’s financial advisor.

«It took us a long time to choose a bank to act as our advisor. We’ve conducted a number of meetings with western banks’ representatives and after a careful study of all offers decided on BNP Paribas», said Andrey Igoshin, PAVA OJSC Chairman of the Board of Directors. There were several criteria for choosing a financial advisor. In the first place, this was the company’s experience in corporate and project finance, but also the staff constituting the team of experts to supervise the project. “We liked it that BNP Paribas offered us a project group constituted by international experts from various fields, for instance agriculture, energy sector and others, and also specialists based in Russia”, says OJSC PAVA International Business Development Director and Director of IR, Galina Balaenkova.

BNP Paribas (www.bnpparibas.com) is the leader on the European market of banking and financial services and ranks fourth in Standard & Poor’s rating of the most stable banks in the world. BNP Paribas Group is present in 85 countries and numbers about 163 000 employees with 127 000 working in Europe. BNP Paribas holds the key position in 3 main areas of banking: corporate and investment banking services, assets management and retail banking. In Europe BNP Paribas works in all of these areas, France and Italy are domestic markets for retail banking. BNP Paribas is established in the US as well, has strong positions in Asian countries and on rapidly developing markets.

Although OJSC PAVA has chosen a financial advisor, collaboration on current offers with other western banks is being continued.

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