Fish factories are conserving supplies – Kommersant FM

Fish factories in the Kaliningrad region have stopped exporting canned food due to the new duty. The export of such products was stopped by six enterprises of the company “For the Motherland,” Sergei Lyutarevich, chairman of the company’s board of directors, told Interfax. According to him, the profitability of producing inexpensive canned fish is 3%, and customs duties are now 7%. As the entrepreneur noted, the company previously exported canned food to all CIS countries except Moldova. The duties do not apply, in particular, to Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

The new measure will paralyze the entire low-price segment of fish products, Vasily Marunenko, general director of the Roskon fish canning complex in the Kaliningrad region, confirmed to Kommersant FM:

“Our buyers in the CIS countries are not ready to bear these costs now. And we also cannot do this due to the low profitability of the products. Therefore, we still have supplies to Kazakhstan, but issues with Azerbaijan, Moldova, Central Asian countries, and Kyrgyzstan are still in limbo; negotiations are underway.

If we talk about the dependence of manufacturers on imports, then it is low. Tomato paste is Chinese, it is bought for dollars, like tin cans. So, if the US currency goes down, then maybe canned food prices will go down and exports will resume.

Now we are forced, say, to increase the cost of products by this 7%: with a profitability of 5-10%, the new customs duty rates eat up all our profits.

For low-profit industries such as canned fish, this is fatal.”

Export duties were introduced on October 1, 2023. This will help protect the domestic market from unjustified price increases, the government specified. The fee rate ranges from 4% to 7% of the customs value, depending on the national currency exchange rate. A duty is charged if a dollar costs 80 rubles. and higher.

In such conditions, Russian producers can only reorient themselves to domestic buyers, believes Alexander Fomin, executive director of the Association of Industrial and Trade Enterprises of the Fish Market:

“I haven’t heard anyone in other regions being indignant about this, because canned food is a small export item. In general, if we take fish products, then about half of them are exported to the West. In any case, the Far East, which accounts for the largest volume of exports, did not raise this topic.

As for Kaliningrad fish factories, their products can be sold on the domestic market for rubles without any problems.

At the same time, there will be a demand for them; Russia is a country that actively consumes canned food. However, prices for canned food in this case will decrease because supply will exceed demand.”

At the same time, Kaliningrad enterprises proposed to the government to abolish the export duty for low-profit products. They enlisted the support of the local governor and industry representatives.

In turn, First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov had not previously ruled out that some categories could be removed from the list of goods subject to duty. According to him, the mechanism of flexible export duties makes it possible to withdraw from exporters from 30% to 40% of the additional income received from the weakening of the ruble.

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