Moscow Margarine Plant

The plant is located in a quarter bounded by the Central Union and Balakirevsky lanes and the Ryazan railway line of the Moscow Railway , directly adjacent to the eastern end of the Moscow-Tovarnaya-Ryazanskaya station . The area of ​​the land plot is 1.815 ha ^[1] . There are 8 production buildings and a tank farm on the territory, the total area of ​​the largest building located inside the quarter is 8.5 thousand m².

The decision to build a large margarine plant in Moscow was made in 1928 due to the noted inefficiency of small industries (in the 1920s, in Moscow, Friture margarine was produced in small volumes at the Steol factory) ^[2] . In July 1930, the plant was put into operation, D. D. Mayorov was appointed director ^[3] , the starting production capacity was 20 tons of margarine per day ^[2] .

The main products of the first years were margarine, the technology of its production was re-complicated, with a low level of automation of operations ^[4] . In the 1930s, the plant mastered the production of mayonnaise, but the volume of production was small, and the production scheme was almost artisanal , based on manual labor ^[5] . The annual volume of mayonnaise production in 1936 amounted to 2.7 tons (an average of 7.4 kg per day), in 1941 275 tons of mayonnaise were produced; during the war, volumes decreased, in 1945 60 tons of mayonnaise were produced, in 1950 - 159 tons ^[6] .

In the 1950s and 1970s, the plant was modernized, equipment was replaced, as a result, the level of mechanization was achieved at 88.6%, 12 lines and continuous installations were launched ^[7] . By the second half of the 1950s, it was possible to improve the consumer qualities of the produced mayonnaise (first of all, to increase the stability of the emulsion ), the demand for products increased, and the plant became the main producer of mayonnaise in Moscow: 1358 tons of mayonnaise were produced in 1957, 3336 tons in 1960, in 1963 - 6674 tons ^[8] . In the late 1950s, in addition to the classic Provencal mayonnaise, the production of small volumes of mayonnaise with additives (with tomato , horseradish , dill oil ) was started in small quantities ^[9] .

In 1976, it was decided to concentrate the entire Moscow mayonnaise production at the Moscow Fat Plant , and in 1977 the mayonnaise production was transferred from the margarine plant to a fat factory, after which the plant was fully specialized in margarine production ^[6] .

In the early 1990s, under the privatization program, the company was incorporated . In 1994, the plant worked with a capacity of 110 tons of margarine per day (corresponding to a level of about 40 thousand tons per year with continuous loading), the range included creamy, milk, fruit, chocolate and low-fat margarines, approximately приблизительно of the production volume was sold in monolith, about a quarter products - in packaged form ^[10] . In the same year, the plant again mastered the production of mayonnaise by purchasing a line for packing the sauce in plastic bags with a capacity of 3 tons per day ^[11] . The number of employees in 1994 amounted to 350 people, the director of the plant in the 1990s - G. V. Urum ^[12] .

In March 1998, the company was acquired by the Anglo-Dutch corporation Unilever ^[13] in order to localize oil and fat production in Russia in connection with the introduction of import duties (in the second half of the 1990s, an import duty of 5% was introduced, soon increased to 15%) ^[14] . Since that time, the company has been featured as “Moscow Unilever Margarine Plant”. The plant launched the production of mayonnaise and sauces under the Calvé trademark, Pyshka margarine, spreads under the Rama and Delmy brands, and Crème Bonjour vegetable-curd cream ^[15] . By 2014, the plant’s capacity amounted to 91 thousand tons of finished products per year ^[16] .

In the spring of 2014, Unilever sold the plant to the Zelenograd company Monomakh Evgenia Titova , who also owns oil refineries in the Glubokoye Rostov Region and Akhtyrsky Krasnodar Territory ^[16] . At the same time, Unilever mayonnaise production is brought to its own factory in Tula (built by the corporation in 1999), and it was decided to keep the production of margarines, spreads and sunflower oil under Unilever brands at the Monomakh plant ^[15] .

• Aram Piruzyan. Moscow Margarine Plant // Life of the country - my fate. - M .: Nauka , 1995 .-- S. 260-267. - 509 p.
• 40 years of the oil and fat and perfume industry of the USSR. - M .: Pishchepromizdat, 1958.- 245 p.

• History of the Moscow Margarine Plant on the Unilever website