Moscow Orientation – Day 12 – Getting Juiced

Today the group went on a site visit to a fruit juice factory near Moscow. It was an interesting visit, and all the more fun to go see something concrete for a change – so far, a lot of our orientation has been more esoteric conversations in conference rooms. I learned a lot about juice manufacturing, and some more about Russian humor on the ride back.

The factory is operated by Wimm-Bill-Dann, the leading fruit juice producer in Russia with nearly 40% market share. Its bigger than it sounds – Russia is a huge market for juice, and grocery stores routinely stock several brands of flavors that are more difficult to find at home. The company is also listed on the NY stock exchange and routinely wins all sorts of prizes for corporate governance and transparency. Laudable, indeed; it also covers up a connection to organized crime that is slightly less well publicized. But then, business in and of itself is a form of organized crime in Russia.

We met with the director of the factory and the public relations person. They described the company a bit, and then went into the production process for juice, with special emphasis on raw materials and quality. None of their products has any artificial additives of any sort.

The factory is a modern, sparkling example of efficiency and technology – even though the entrance is through an old milk factory with low ceilings, soviet murals, and dingy floors. The process is highly automated, and spurred along by german machinery from Tetra Pak, the global packaging conglomerate. The facility produces 1 million liters a day, and is one of 25 such facilities in Russia.

It’s an impressive setup and, frankly, a bit mystifying. I stared at the filling machine for nearly 5 minutes but was still unable to figure out how the juice actually got into the cartons. A continuous tube of cartons streams down filled with juice. The tube is crimped at intervals corresponding to the packaging and then sealed. All this happens in a blink of an eye. Then, the caps are glued on – which simply didn’t seem to square with my experience as a consumer of their products.

Anyway, they let us take a carton off the line for ourselves. I had the pleasure of selecting a grapefruit juice that, as the time stamp shows on top, had been manufactured only moments before. Neat. Jim and I lagged behind to ask the warehouse foreman a couple of questions, and ended up getting lost on the factory floor. We had to be retrieved by our handlers.

We piled back into the van to return to Moscow and I ended up sitting near Sergei, our driver. He’s a very nice person, and a real character. He provided rolling commentary as we pulled out of the little town. Sergei noted that the factory on the left produced fighter jets for many years, and that the town was closed to all outsiders for many years.
“What is the name of this town?” I asked.
“I’m not telling!” he shouted back.

They also apparently produced parts for the space agency. That led to how the Americans faked the moon landing with doctored pictures.
“Listen,” he said, “Soon the Chinese will be living on the moon and they’ll prove that the Americans were never there.”

He also lamented that New York has a Russian neighborhood but Moscow has no Little New York.
“But 3 Americans live on Nikitskaya near the office,” I remarked, “that’s kind of like a little New York.”
“No,” he retorted, “that’s more like an invasion than a settlement.”

I was getting the gist of the banter at this point. When we got into the center of town, he baited us once again. Looking at the Kremlin, he asked if the White House was as big.
“No,” I said, “but it’s more beautiful.”

He got a huge kick out of that.