Pernod Ricard plans to close its representative office in Russia

Concern Pernod Ricard (owns brands of alcoholic beverages Chivas Regal, Jameson, Ballantine’s, Ararat) plans to close its representative office in Russia. About it informed “Kommersant” with reference to the sources and data of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the Russian representative office of the company is P.R. Rus” was headed by Ignatiy Arakelyan, who was previously the general director of the Yerevan Brandy Factory (YBC) and the Minister of Agriculture of Armenia. In his new position, he replaced Laurent Piyet, who headed the Russian representative office of Pernod Ricard since 2019, who moved to work in another region.

As Arakelyan noted, now the company is working on stopping operations, it has no other plans. According to the publication, by now most of the employees have left the Russian structure of Pernod Ricard, the rest can do this before the end of August.

At the end of 2022, deliveries to Russia amounted to 6.95 million liters of products. In May 2023, Pernod Ricard announced that it would stop deliveries of all international brands to Russia. By that time, since the beginning of the year, 4.6 million liters of alcohol had been imported into Russia.

Despite the company’s decision to close its representative office, Pernod Ricard brand products will still enter the Russian market through parallel imports. In particular, as the representative of the company noted, the Ararat cognac produced at YBC is supplied to Russia.

According to the publication’s sources, the Russian market accounts for about 70-90% of the consumption of cognac of this brand, while there are no other markets with such volumes of consumption. In this regard, the idea is being considered to sell Ararat production to Luding Group, which has been distributing Pernod Ricard products since 2019, Kommersant added. According to sources of the edition, the owner evaluates the asset too expensive. In Pernod Ricard itself, all talk about the sale of the YBC is denied.