The Le Monde newspaper has quite recently published an interview with the Deputy Director of The Liston Company, Yury Saprygin. The journalists have been invited to one of the leading small business enterprises in the Kaluga region.
They were interested to know how russian companies build their work under the conditions of unprecedented western sanctions and what kind of problems do exist. Liston is an exact example how to adjust to the new terms of work quickly and to solve the current problems efficiently.
The authors of this interview have noted an optimism of the interviewer who told about the existing problems’ solutions with a sense of enthusiasm and confidence.
There is no secret that Liston as many other manufacturers has faced a number of difficulties following some events. First of all the challenges are related to the supplies of the components from Italy and Poland as well as to the payments troubleshooting and logistic chains disruption. Despite of this fact, Liston keeps working and looks for the ways of resolving. Thus the issue of the components supplies has been solved in two directions:
In the circumstances when it became clear that the sanctions should have followed the purchase of the strategic reserve of the components had been made in due time. This allowed not to shut down the production facilities but to search for new suppliers.
A search for the new suppliers. The import substitution of the Italian and Polish components for some quality analogues from Belarus enabled to tackle the supply troubles in the long term.
Yury Saprygin does not hide the fact that his company resorts to the so-called ‘parallel import’ authorized in Russia for a certain group of products this June.
The logistics and payment issues are also being handled. Perhaps it takes more time and harder efforts but they are really being determined. As a result сustomers get their items right on time whereas our clients in Africa for example proceed their payments in yuan, which is convenient enough for the Russian company.
The embargo on equipments and machines (these are more difficult to obtain on the parallel markets) can prove quite painful lastingly. This fact is realized by the company’s management and the search for spare parts is still being actively pursued on the internal market. “So far we’ve been renovating in-house but the long-term solutions are to be found”, Yury’s admitted.
Overall Yury expresses his confidence that all Russian companies will cope with an every difficulty. The conclusion made by the representatives of the French newspaper Le Monde cannot but please: “The economists predicted a dramatic breakdown within this year to the Russian economy for nothing…”
You can read a full version of the article on the website:
https://inosmi.ru/20221101/sanktsii-257393476.html
