Russian Milk Output Falls 1% in First Half as Production Concentrates in Large Farms
Russia's raw milk production fell 1 percent year on year in the first half to 16.7 million tonnes, according to National Dairy Union head Lyudmila Manitskaya. Large agricultural organisations added 2 percent to 11 million tonnes, while farming enterprises and household plots lost 5.4 and 7.4 percent respectively. A packaging plant shutdown in early August adds a second risk for processors.
Milk production in Russia is increasingly concentrated in large agricultural enterprises with significant technological capacity, while small and medium-sized producers and household plots continue to lose volume. The head of the National Dairy Union, Lyudmila Manitskaya, described the shift as a structural problem for the industry in comments reported by Interfax.
Total raw milk output on the domestic market fell 1 percent year on year in the first half, to 16.7 million tonnes. TASS, citing Manitskaya, reported the same 1 percent decline against the first half of 2025. The contraction is modest in aggregate, but it masks movements in opposite directions inside the producer base.
Growth at the top, decline at the base
Manitskaya set out first-half output by category, and the three segments moved apart rather than together:
- Large agricultural organisations: up 2 percent, to 11 million tonnes.
- Farming enterprises: down 5.4 percent, to 1.25 million tonnes.
- Household plots: down 7.4 percent, to 4.45 million tonnes.
Large organisations were the only category to add volume, and they now supply close to two thirds of Russian raw milk. The combined loss in the farm and household segments outweighed the 2 percent gain at the top, producing the overall decline. Smaller producers have been shrinking for longer than a single season: “small forms of farming have been declining for the fourth year in a row,” Manitskaya said. Negative dynamics are also recorded in the household plot segment, she added.
Non-marketable milk and the call for support
The share of non-marketable milk in Russia stands at 30 percent, Manitskaya said in comments reported by TASS. Non-marketable milk is raw milk that never reaches a processing plant — it is consumed within the household, fed to livestock or sold informally — and it sits almost entirely in the segments that are contracting fastest.
Manitskaya called on the authorities to support small and medium-sized dairy businesses. “It is necessary to look for instruments to help small and medium-sized farms,” she said. The National Dairy Union did not specify in the remarks reported by Interfax and TASS which measures it considers a priority.
Packaging shutdown adds a second risk
A separate pressure point sits downstream. In early August, Praimkartonpak, one of the country's largest producers of packaging for dairy products, suspended output after damage to its production premises, Lenta.ru reported. Its client list included leading players on the Russian dairy market: Ekomilk, the Kirov, Tula, Nalchik and Korenovsk dairy plants, the Orenburg dairy combine A7 Agro, Yaroslavl KMP and Altayskaya Burenka.
The shutdown of a supplier of that scale could push the sector back into the conditions seen after the exit of the largest Western producers, according to Lenta.ru. In 2022 and 2023, plants faced serious difficulties in producing core products amid a shortage of cardboard and problems with repairing and servicing equipment under Western sanctions.
Experts cited by the publication agreed that the country retains a certain reserve of capacity able to compensate partially for the lost volumes. Partial compensation, however, leaves processors exposed on cost and lead times, and that burden falls unevenly across a producer base already splitting between large integrated holdings and shrinking small farms.
