“I view last year’s result as excellent given the circumstances. Due to various lockdowns last year, our main export markets saw store closures, and halted trade; in spring, we had downtime, and tensions also emerged in our commodity supply chains. However, with the pandemic briefly retracting in the second half of the year, we rallied, accelerated and caught up with our lost time. This was an achievement borne out of the company’s staff being motivated and enthusiastic,” Kauno Baldai CEO Tomas Mauricas says.
According to Mauricas, due to lockdown restrictions in the largest markets in the Benelux countries and Scandinavia, if comparing last year to 2019, the company sold the same or slightly lesser quantities of its production. However, Kauno Baldai has been gaining ground in Germany where sales increased 35 per cent year on year, reaching 3.9 million euros.
T. Mauricas explains that at the moment, commodity price corrections are becoming a challenge, and they could have an influence on the final price of the company’s products. Efforts are being made to cushion this impact by focusing on production efficiency. Particular attention continues to be focused on staff health and coronavirus prevention, with a multi-level monitoring and safety system being implemented in order to prevent the virus from entering and spreading within the company.
“While the coronavirus continues to rampage in Lithuania and our export markets this year, we place our hopes in the vaccinations, and hope that the mandatory restrictions will be gradually retracted which will allow production to gain pace again. This year, we have set ourselves the goal to grow by double-digit figures and expect for sales in Germany to catch up to Scandinavia, comprising more than a fifth of Kauno Baldai’s revenue,” T. Mauricas says of the company’s plans.
With increases in production, the company looks to hire several new staff members. According to T. Mauricas, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find good specialists in the market, and so Kauno Baldai has been investing in training its own. Kauno Baldai employs over 360 specialists and exports 100 per cent of its production to Western Europe.
The SBA Group is one of Lithuania’s largest, operating in the real estate, textile and furniture manufacturing sectors, employing around 5,000 staff members. Other than Kauno Baldai, the SBA furniture sector also includes SBA Baldų Kompanija, which manages Klaipėdos Baldai, Šilutės Baldai, Germanika, Visagino Linija, Mebelain and Laminn.
