After tightening controls a month ago, Lithuania has seen grain imports from Russia and Belarus coming almost to a halt, while transit shipments to other EU markets have surged, according to the State Food and Veterinary Service (VMVT).
“After March 18, we’ve seen a 95-percent drop in imports from Russia and Belarus to Lithuania, but we’ve noticed an increase in transit shipments via Lithuania to other EU countries,” VMVT Director Audrone Mikalauskiene told BNS.
Starting on March 18, the service has been inspecting every rail or road shipment of grain from Russia and its occupied regions, and Belarus, checking the origin of the grain. Moreover, grain shipments destined for the EU market continue to be checked for additives banned in the bloc.
The number of grain shipments destined for Germany, Denmark, France, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and other EU markets jumped to 317 between March 18 and April 16, compared to 184 between January 1 and March 18, according to Mikalauskienė.
“This means that the number of transit shipments from Russia and Belarus via Lithuania to other EU countries has almost doubled,” she said.
An average of 20–25 import shipments of Russian or Belarusian feed entered Lithuania daily before the stricter controls were put in place on March 18.
In the first month of the tightened inspections, however, 38 vehicles carrying 1,068 tons of feed from Russia and Belarus for import into Lithuania were checked. Of these, three shipments were cleared, and the rest are still undergoing laboratory checks.
Last week, there were no feed shipments intended for the Lithuanian market.
Moreover, no shipments of Russian or Belarusian non-animal origin cereals or their products for final consumption have been shipped for import into Lithuania since March 18. Six other trucks carrying feed from Russia and 15 from Belarus were turned away at the border due to improper documents.
Bega says it imports no grain, Dognus declines to comment
The VMVT has also said that 28 out of the 38 shipments checked in the past month were imported by the company Pašarų Eksportas ir Importas (Export and Import of Feed), and the rest by Ekofarm, an organic fertiliser and cereal trading company, Rokjus, a pellet trading company, Lavišos Koncernas, a supplier of raw materials for food producers, and Imlitex Agro, an agricultural raw material supplier.
Data available to BNS indicates that before the restrictions were put in place, most of the Russian and Belarusian feed was imported and loaded onto ships by the stevedoring companies Bega and Dognus based in the seaport of Klaipėda.
Bega CEO Laimonas Rimkus says that the company currently does not import grain and thus does not pay for any veterinary checks.
“Our operations aren’t affected at all [by the tightened veterinary grain inspections] because we don’t import anything, we aren’t traders,” Rimkus told BNS.
“I don’t see any changes. I know that there’s been a very intensive increase, a multi-fold increase, in these volumes in Latvian ports,” he said when asked whether the company had started handling more Russian grain for EU markets after March 18.
Dognus CEO Arunas Vasiliauskas declined to comment on the company’s operations when approached by BNS.
According to the VMVT, 292 shipments containing 18,000 tons of grain were transited from Russia and Belarus through Lithuania to other EU countries between March 18 and April 16, and Bega covered the veterinary inspection costs for 97 percent of these shipments.
Mikalauskienė said that 25 shipments of grain destined for the German market were transported through the port of Klaipėda last week alone.
Figures provided to BNS by the State Data Agency show that only about 12,200 tons of maize, worth 1.95 million euros in total, were imported from Russia to Lithuania between January and February.
The statistics office estimates that 30,120 tons of Russian maize worth 7.77 million euros, 6,190 tons of buckwheat, sorghum or other cereals worth 2.76 million euros, and 1,530 tons of Belarusian wheat and meslin worth 355,400 euros were imported into Lithuania from Russia last year.
In an effort to stop Russian agricultural products from entering the EU market, the European Commission proposed in March to impose maximum import tariffs on cereals, oilseeds and their products, including wheat, maize and sunflower meal.
Lithuania, along with Latvia, Estonia, Poland and the Czech Republic, urged the EU’s executive body to impose a full ban on grain imports from Russia and Belarus.
According to the Commission’s data, 4.8 million tons of grain, worth 1.5 billion euros, were imported into the EU from Russia and Belarus last year.
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