“The plants in Kaliningrad buy the output of our poultry-houses but, as a result of duties, the produce does not come back to Lithuania and is sold in Russia instead. If preferential terms are approved, they will continue buying raw materials but their produce will come back to Lithuania and our processors will have to compete on domestic market,” Giedrius Bagušinskas, director of Lithuanian Food Exporters Association, told the daily.
The capacities of plants in the Kaliningrad region matched those of Lithuania’s top producers, so Russians would be strong competitors, he said.
“There is no sense in giving our raw materials away to Russia to process. We have to develop our own industry and it is short on raw supplies, but we will give work to neighbors since they have cheaper energy resources,” Petras Riauba, CEO of meat processing company Riamona, told the daily.
Meanwhile, the executives of Lithuania’s poultry-houses expect benefit from the entry of new potential buyers.
“If Russians offer attractive prices, we will export. Our breeders will find it attractive if there is one more buyer. The neighbors will not sweep chickens away since we have Poland nearby and the output of poultry there is much larger than ours,” Vytautas Tevelis, president of Lithuanian Poultry Association, told the daily.
Some 10 percent of poultry output was being processed in Lithuania now, he added.
