Damage from a fire in the Wildberries warehouse complex near St. Petersburg could amount to 17 billion rubles.
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The damage from the fire in the Wildberries warehouse complex near St. Petersburg could amount to 17 billion rubles, or about 1% of the marketplace’s total turnover, experts have calculated. In the near future, the online retailer will have to compensate for the losses of sellers whose goods were burned and return funds to customers who did not receive orders. This, as market participants say, will take from one and a half to three months. But the most difficult thing will be finding a replacement for a burned-out warehouse given an acute shortage of available premises on the market. Delivery times for goods in the North-West of the Russian Federation may increase, and Wildberries may lose part of their turnover.
On January 15, the first payments of compensation will begin to Wildberries sellers who lost their goods due to a major fire in a warehouse complex in Shushary near St. Petersburg, the marketplace reported. The online retailer also promised to refund customers for paid orders that cannot be fulfilled due to the state of emergency. The fire covered an area of 70 thousand square meters. m, the warehouse building was almost destroyed, as was all the goods stored there. The fire started on the morning of January 13 and took more than a day to extinguish. The cause of the fire has not yet been established. The Investigative Committee of Russia has opened a criminal case for abuse of power (Article 201 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) against as yet unidentified persons.
Wildberries seller Alexander Nazarenko told Kommersant that he had goods, mostly clothes, worth 1.5 million rubles in a warehouse in Shushary. in purchase prices. He is counting on compensation from the marketplace, but does not hope to receive it in the near future: “At least, after a similar incident with the Ozon warehouse in the Moscow region, we waited three and a half months for compensation, but we returned everything we promised.” Ozon burned down 50 thousand square meters. m in the logopark in the Istra district of the Moscow region in August 2022.
According to a Kommersant source in the e-commerce market, in order for full payments to begin not only to sellers who lost goods, but also refunds to customers who did not receive orders due to the fire, insurance companies will need to calculate the full amount of damage. This takes from one and a half to two months, Kommersant’s interlocutor clarified. At the same time, customers can start receiving money earlier, “given that the amount of their orders is already recorded in the financial documents of the online retailer.”
Wildberries said that the exact amounts of compensation to sellers and the general damage that the marketplace suffered due to the fire will be established after reconciling data from electronic accounting systems and other indicators.
According to previously announced preliminary estimates by the All-Russian Union of Insurers, Wildberries’ losses from the emergency could amount to about 10 billion rubles. However, Mikhail Burmistrov, general director of Infoline-Analytics, emphasizes that, according to minimum estimates, goods worth 12 billion rubles were stored in the burned complex alone. Another 3–5 billion rubles are the costs of building the facility and the cost of equipment, he adds. That is, the amount of damage to the marketplace could reach 17 billion rubles. The online retailer will include the total amount of funds returned to customers and compensation to sellers for lost goods in the loss section, the expert adds.
Wildberries bought a site for a warehouse in Shushary more than two years ago (see “Kommersant” dated June 24, 2021). The marketplace estimated the costs of construction of the facility alone at 3 billion rubles.
The consequences of the fire for Wildberries will not be critical, since the goods stored in the burned warehouse account for less than 1% of the marketplace’s turnover, believes Alexey Fedorov, Chairman of the Committee for the Development of Electronic Commerce of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In the first half of 2023 alone, the online retailer’s turnover, according to its own data, from sales of goods and services increased by 94% year-on-year, to RUB 1.22 trillion.
However, there will still be noticeable consequences for the company, says Mikhail Burmistrov. In his opinion, the fire could lead to “some reduction in the marketplace’s turnover.”
In particular, the company risks losing a significant part of its market share in the North-West of Russia.
In Shushary, Wildberries had the largest distribution center; the space available to the online retailer in the Utkina Zavod logopark is insufficient, a Kommersant source in the market says.
The marketplace has already notified its sellers that new areas of the sorting center in St. Petersburg will be operational within two weeks, promising to reveal the exact address later. But “the level of free space in the city’s warehouse market is close to zero, so quickly finding a replacement for a burned-out complex will be problematic,” says Ilya Knyazev, head of the warehouse and industrial real estate department at the consulting company NF Group. Most likely, the online retailer will speed up the construction of its second warehouse in the region, believes Alexey Fedorov.
According to Mr. Knyazev, before the appearance of the complex in Shushary, the marketplace supplied a significant part of goods to St. Petersburg and neighboring regions through fulfillment centers in the Moscow region. Perhaps, the expert believes, the company will return to this scheme until it finds additional warehouse space in the region. But this, one of the sellers emphasizes, “will increase delivery times by about a week, and before the upcoming sales on February 23 and March 8, perhaps for a longer period.”
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