The sanctions imposed for unleashing a war against Ukraine have hit Russian farmers: they are faced with a shortage of imported spare parts for their foreign agricultural equipment. The problem has already led to an increase in maintenance costs, and also showed the impossibility of a quick import substitution: neither Russian nor Chinese counterparts fall short in terms of quality. Kommersant writes about this with reference to market participants.

The share of foreign equipment in the fleet of Russian agricultural companies is estimated at around 30–40%, warehouses with foreign spare parts are almost empty, and parallel imports have not yet started working; in addition, potential partners in the same Kazakhstan directly talk about the risks of falling under secondary sanctions, so they are not ready to deal directly. Farmers' expenses are only rising, the shortage has led to a sharp increase in prices for parts and services.

“A number of suppliers have some simple parts in stock, but they need to be looked for, and prices are 50-100% higher than pre-crisis,” says one of the interlocutors of the publication, noting that some have already begun to allocate one car from the fleet “for spare parts ".

Representatives of companies expect that the government will not bring the problem to a situation similar to that in the aviation industry, where they have begun to cannibalize the fleet, that is, dismantle aircraft for spare parts in order to maintain the rest of the fleet in working order. According to market participants, there is still 1.5–2 years before the mass cannibalization of the park, they expect that parallel imports will solve the problems with the shortage.

“The farther, the more articles are in short supply, but the situation varies depending on the brands. The most difficult situation is with John Deere, because they have a very large fleet, and no matter how large the warehouse is, it is depleted. There are practically no problems with AGCO yet, but this does not mean that they will not arise in the fall,” says Alexander Altynov, Chairman of the Board of the Association of Agricultural Machinery Dealers ASHOD.

Import substitution of foreign products by domestic or Chinese counterparts is possible only partially. Russian and Chinese harvesters and tractors cannot cope with the level of tasks that American, European and Japanese equipment can take on. In particular, they are inferior in power, in addition, in some important details they also depend on imported supplies - we are talking about hydraulic systems, bearings and turbines. It is simply not possible to establish your own production in such a short period of time.

The collapsed Russian car market is currently experiencing similar problems with spare parts, to which even China recently refused to help due to too high risks for doing business and a sharp drop in the purchasing power of Russians.