Smurfit Kappa has ended its corporate silence on operations in Russia by announcing that it is to quit the Russian market completely.
Ahead of the sale, the company has ended support for the corrugated board and wine in a box activities across four plants it operates in the country. It has already stopped any imports to these operations and blocked exports. The Russian businesses account for less than 1% of group sales, Smurfit Kappa says, adding that it contributes to the Red Cross efforts to resolve the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.
Others across print are also helping raise funds for relief efforts or collection clothes, food and other needed essentials for those displaced by the conflict. Among them J&A International which produces transfers for workwear and safety signage has joined a scheme where all profits that are recorded on every Friday during March are donated via Work for Ukraine.
Potts Print, Cramlington, has printed a children’s book called Who is Your Neighbour as part of a project in the north east to raise £10,000 for Ukraine from sales of the 20pp book. EBB donated the paper for the project.
Meanwhile the Ukrainian Book Institute, representing book publishers in the country, is looking for printers outside Ukraine willing to print children’s books which will then be donated to refugee children. It has been in contact with printers in Lithuania and Poland and has organised the first publication with a run of 1,000 copies.
In Russia itself the government has removed tariffs on papers and boards that can be used in production of food and pharmaceutical products. This includes folding carton board, kraft papers and boards, rolls of self adhesive films and flexible packaging films. The exclusion will last for six months. The products covered amount to 100,000 tonnes of material in 2021, 90% of which was imported from the EU.
And while Ukrainian print businesses have suffered physical damage as a result of bombs and strikes during the war, this has now happened in Russia. The widely reported helicopter raid on a Russian fuel depot at Belgorod near the border is also reported to have caused damage to the Constanta Printing House in Severny. It lost windows, power and suffered damage to some equipment. There were no casualties.
