Over the course of 20 years in the Central Asian market, the Star Brands Group (Flint, Chipster’s, BigBob) has established four production facilities in Kazakhstan and is preparing to expand into Uzbekistan, said Star Brands Director of Strategic Marketing Yevgen Razuvayev at the Forbes Ukraina Exporters Summit.
“In our case, everything was built against the odds. In 2006, we entered Kazakhstan but couldn’t find a single logistics company or distributor capable of ensuring a nationwide presence in a country that stretches over 3,000 kilometers from east to west. So we became our own first national distributor: our ‘rapid response team’ of 13 people went there and learned about the new culture and customs right on the ground,” Razuvayev said.
The speaker paid special attention to the transformation of logistics chains due to Russian aggression. According to him, Star Brands made a fundamental decision to completely cease operations and exit the Russian market as early as 2014–2016, without waiting for this to become a widespread trend among large businesses.
“I’ll let you in on a secret: we exited that market back in 2014, when it wasn’t ‘extremely popular.’” “We realized we wouldn’t be able to ensure normal logistics from Ukraine to Central Asia, since the main route—the railway—ran through the territory of the aggressor country, which we don’t even want to mention. Transit became impossible without a critical increase in the product’s price,” the manager emphasized.
It was precisely the logistics blockade and the impossibility of safe transit through Russia that prompted the creation of our own production facilities directly in Kazakhstan. Currently, four Star Brands sites are operating successfully there, specifically for the production of crackers and potato chips, which allows the company to maintain a competitive cost of goods sold in the region.
“Logistics matters more for our product than it does for metallurgy. When we sell chips, we’re essentially ‘transporting air.’ That’s why logistics costs are extremely important in our production costs. If you don’t have a truly unique product, then when you calculate your capabilities ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down,’ the numbers just don’t add up. It takes a special talent to build a business where logistics ‘eat up’ the entire margin,” Razuvayev explained.
The marketing director also urged Ukrainian exporters to “stop looking only toward the European Union” and turn their attention to the East, specifically to Uzbekistan, whose population already exceeds that of Ukraine.
“Uzbekistan is a country undergoing remarkable changes. From a completely closed-off territory, it is transforming into a market with enormous potential. For us, it serves as a springboard for further development in Eastern countries. Look to the East—that’s the real Asia, where there are countless opportunities,” he concluded.
Star Brands is an international trading and manufacturing group of companies founded in 1995 in Dnipro. The holding operates as a vertically integrated structure with a full cycle of production, logistics, and marketing, and unites 33 production sites. The group includes the distribution company “Concept” with a portfolio of over 50 international brands, its own logistics company “Logistic American,” and the Star Brands Asia division for business development in Central Asian countries.
The group’s portfolio includes 32 brands, among which are the snack brands Flint, Chipster’s, BigBob, and “San Sanich,” the grocery brands “Khutorok” and La Pasta, as well as the non-food brands SoHo and Zeffir. Products are exported to 35 countries worldwide, including the EU, the U.S., and the Baltic states.
