Several Lithuanian supermarket chains have announced they will stop stocking Russian products, a reaction to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Industry representatives say they would be hard-pressed if they had to give up raw materials from Russia.
Norfa is one of the supermarket chains in Lithuania that has decided to give up importing Russian products.
“We have not yet decided how to approach it, but life is forcing us to give up Russian products,” Dainius Dundulis, the head of Norfa, said. “We don’t stock many Russian products. We have more Ukrainians ones. There’s a lot of uncertainty about that too.”
According to Dundulis, Norfa already stopped importing Belarusian goods after Minsk hijacked a Vilnius-bound Ryanair flight in order to arrest a Belarusian dissident last May.
Some shoppers have enquired about the removed Belarusian products and Norfa expects that some will miss Russian goods too.
Maxima, Lithuania’s biggest supermarket chain, is also giving up Russian and Belarusian products, according to the company’s communications chief Ernesta Dapkiene.
“We have made a decision today to take goods made in Russia and Belarus off our shelves and suspend further orders from suppliers in these countries,” she said.
Alcohol accounts for the bulk of Russian products sold by Maxima, according to Dapkiene.
Two other chains, Lidl and Iki, said that they did not import any Russian or Belarusian products.
The Lithuanian Confederation of Industrialists (LPK) says that Lithuania has not been exporting much to Russia since 2014. However, many Lithuanian manufacturers are dependent on Russian imports of fossil fuels, metals and timber.
“Looking ahead, businesses should diversify their risks and look for alternatives,” Vidmantas Janulevicius, the president of the LKP, said.
“Finding alternatives to energy resources will be difficult,” he added. “But the businesses will search and perhaps they can buy fossil fuels from other countries. There’s willingness to talk with Asian countries, the Middle East in order to have alternatives.”
Businesses would be particularly hard-pressed if they were cut off from Russian gas, according to Janulevicius. This could happen, if Russia were disconnected from the SWIFT global interbank payments system.
SEB Bank economist Tadas Povilauskas said that exports of Lithuania-made goods to Russia were rather small, about 370 million euros or 1.7% of the total.
However, giving up Russian imports would be a challenge.
“If we include energy imports, they totaled 4.6 billion euros in 2021 or 12% of our total imports,” he said. “If there are disturbances or restrictions, we will feel it.”
Orlen Lietuva, an oil refinery in northern Lithuania, would be hit hard, for example, as it mostly processes Russian oil.
However, cutting other imports – timber, metals, fertilizers – would be painful in the short term as well, according to Povilauskas.
“The markets for these raw materials have been tight recently. If imports from Russia disappeared, it would be difficult to find new partners immediately,” he said.
However, according to Andrius Romanovskis, the president of the Lithuanian Business Confederation, cutting all ties with Russia and Belarus is something that Lithuanian companies should do.
“This is unprecedented in the last 50 years of European history,” he said, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “It is evident that one should do business only in a safe environment, safe country, functioning state. Russia is now turning itself into a pariah state. Clearly, we should not, we can’t, and it’s dangerous to have anything to do with such countries.” (LRT/Business World Magazine)