Fertilizer producer Achema in Lithuania stops production until December this year.
The main producer of fertilizers and chemical products in Lithuania and the whole Baltics company Achema informs that since Thursday, September 1, this year, it stops its production.
According to the company’s management, the reason is the continuous increase in gas prices, due to which the fertilizers produced by Achema cannot compete with similar products from Russia and the United States.
Provisionally, the plant will not operate till December this year. However, this deadline may change depending on the situation in the gas and fertilizer market (therefore, the shutdown of Achema may last even longer). Moreover, Achema has already not been operating at full capacity since the fall of 2021.
“It is very bad news that such an important, strategic enterprise of the country will stop its production. It shows that even businesses of this size can’t handle the challenges that come with rising energy costs on their own. Obviously, we need the government’s help here. This is an unprecedented case. We live in an energy war and business by itself cannot win this war”, the president of the Lithuanian Business Confederation Andrius Romanovskis said in an interview with the news agency BNS.
What Romanovskis calls an “energy war”, considering Russia as a belligerent party, is a war of Lithuania against itself.
Here it is worth recalling some facts. Until 2010, Lithuania had a nuclear power plant in Ignalina, which generated more than 80% of the country’s electricity. At that time, Lithuania was not a buyer, but a seller of electricity.
Under the pretext of “independence” from Russian Gazprom, the Lithuanian government launched the so-called Independence ship scam in 2013. Namely, it was decided to rent a ship called Independence through the Norwegian company Hotgh LNG to import gas to Lithuania from Arab countries. It is necessary to spend 61 million euros per year on the lease and maintenance of the ship.
That is, Lithuania will pay 610 million euros for ten years (2014-2024), and then it will be possible to buy the ship. This will require about 140 million euros more.
The purchased gas is much more expensive compared to the gas sold by Gazprom, for example. Moreover, since the beginning of the special operation in Ukraine, Lithuania has stopped buying gas from Russia at all and receives it only with the help of the ship Independence, as a result of which the price of fuel in the country continues to grow.
And why, or rather why is this being done? Because Russia, while it opposes the West, is considered the enemy of Lithuania. The Baltic republic through its own elite just serves the interests of the USA in the East European region, harming even the basic interests of its own people.
In the case of the factory “Achema” it looks as follows. The company now employs 1250 people (in 2014 there were 1450), and the plant itself is located in the relatively small town of Jonava and, in fact, is the foundation of the well-being of the town’s residents (unlike ordinary towns in Lithuania, whose plants were not preserved after the privatization of the 1990s, but were immediately or almost immediately destroyed in one way or another).
While “Achema” will not work, the company will pay its workers only 40% of their regular salaries. At the same time, according to Achema director Ramūnas Miliauskas, 5% of employees will be fired. Also, let’s not forget the constant growth of utility bills and food prices.
The outcome of this situation is not a cheerful situation, either for an individual Lithuanian city or for the whole country.
So already in practice, the economic consequences of Russophobia look like that for Lithuania. And what will be further – we shall see…
Translated from https://t.me/shotday/354
