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PK Akulchev
A fire in May 2020 destroyed five of the seven automated lines at PK Akulchev's plant in Naberezhnye Chelny, and rebuilding took about 18 months. Five years later the Tatarstan soft-waffle maker added capacity a different way: it took control of an under-used factory in Chelyabinsk instead of building one.
From Naberezhnye Chelny to Kolos in Chelyabinsk
From a bakery on a mortgaged flat to a second factory
In November 2025 PK Akulchev (ПК Акульчев), a soft-waffle and biscuit maker from Naberezhnye Chelny in Tatarstan, took control of the Kolos confectionery factory in Chelyabinsk. Kolos was then running at 10 to 20 per cent of its capacity. For a company that had grown by adding its own lines, one machine at a time, the deal brought in a working plant whole.
A soft-waffle maker on the Kama
PK Akulchev is the production company of the Akulchev confectionery business, which Sergey Akulchev founded as a bakery in Naberezhnye Chelny in 1995 and still controls. Registries list him as the sole founder of the production company, registered in Yelabuga in 2011. The plant is in Naberezhnye Chelny, and it makes soft waffles and biscuits under the Akulchev name.
Its place in the market is measured by value. NTech data cited by Kommersant rank the company seventh by value in Russia’s tea-accompaniment confectionery segment in 2024: the sweets bought to go with a cup of tea.
Its reach runs beyond Russia. The company has sold in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Azerbaijan from the mid-2000s, later in the US, China and Armenia, and on Amazon US from 2019, where its dry macarons are sold under a retailer’s private label. The production company was certified by DUM RT’s halal committee (2024), the halal standard body of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Tatarstan, and the Akulchev business exhibited at Gulfood in Dubai in 2025 and 2026.
A bakery, a default and an Austrian line
The business began in 1995 as a bakery of a few square metres in Naberezhnye Chelny, financed by a family flat mortgaged to private lenders at 15–20% a month. Three years later Russia’s August 1998 default left it carrying debts heavy enough that closing it was considered.
It grew instead. In 2001 the bakery added Kurabye (курабье) biscuits, five ovens with depositing machines and a condensed-milk shop. In 2002, at a Moscow food fair, the company met the Austrian equipment maker HAAS and negotiated a €600,000 soft-waffle line with 20% paid upfront. The line, an SOW 48, started production in 2003; the company says it made Russia’s first soft-waffle product.
In 2004 came the product the brand is still known by: Vienna waffles with a soufflé filling based on the Ptichye moloko (Птичье молоко, “bird’s milk”) cake. They became its signature line. The Crembly and Crisps lines followed in 2005, and with them the first sales abroad.
Three close calls
The default was the first of three times the business came close to the edge. In November 2009 the lessor Glavleasing («Главлизинг») filed four suits over about ₽17m in lease arrears, and the business was reorganised into three companies. The production company, PK Akulchev, was registered in October 2011. That year the company also opened a premium café chain, Dessert Boutique. It closed in 2014, when raw-material costs rose by about 30% and the rouble fell; exports to Uzbekistan began the same year.
The heaviest blow came on 22 May 2020. A fire at the plant in Naberezhnye Chelny destroyed five of its seven automated lines during a Covid outbreak. Recovery took about 18 months. Within weeks a new jam-waffle line was running in the surviving premises, and some work moved to manual labour while the automated lines were replaced. The company then put its sales effort behind macarons and filled waffles, ran its first television campaign in 2021 and set up a contract-manufacturing division in 2022. The Akulchev business’s trading house later went to court against its insurer, Granta (СК «Гранта»), over a disputed claim of ₽39.5m; that figure is the disputed insurance sum, not the cost of the fire.
The pressure did not end with the rebuild. In 2023 labour shortages and higher retail-chain markups squeezed margins, and second-hand European lines lifted capacity by 20%.
What it makes and how it sells
PK Akulchev is a manufacturer. It makes the waffles and biscuits; the group’s trading house, TD Akulchev, a separate legal entity, sells them. The range runs from the Vienna waffles to the Crembly and Crisps lines. In 2015 the company took ISO 22000 certification and made its first shipments to the US, China and Armenia, and in 2016 it opened an office in Moscow.
The same year it changed its recipes. From September 2016 it switched from palm oil to high-oleic sunflower oil, with prices up about 10%, and the company says it was the first in Russia to drop palm oil.
Buying, not building
Kolos was a different kind of addition. PK Akulchev took control of PTK Kolos («Колос»), a confectionery factory in Chelyabinsk, in November 2025; the Ruslada («Руслада») brand was not part of the deal. In an interview with 74.ru in February 2026, Akulchev gave the reason in terms of the cost of money, with the key rate then near 20% a year.
The company has announced plans to invest about ₽1bn in Kolos over 2026–27. The result is not yet known. What is on record is the decision and the reason given for it: when capital was dear, the company took on lines that were already standing rather than build its own.
Researched 55 sources in Russian.