Kommersant learned about the transfer of the Russian business of the Polish Hansa to a distributor.

At the end of the first quarter of this year, the Hansa home appliance brand (owned by the Polish Amica group) transferred management of its Russian office to the home appliance distributor Hyper LLC, Kommersant's sources in the home appliance market told us.

According to one of the sources, the company was forced to abandon its representative office in Russia due to increased pressure from Polish and EU authorities. The current legal entity will eventually be liquidated, and the employees will be transferred to Hyper LLC. Both sources noted that the deal was non-cash.

"For Hansa, the Russian home appliance market was a key one. Profits from Russia allowed the company to pay off its debts in Europe, so management spent two years trying to balance the EU's interests with its own," explained one source.

According to SPARK-Interfax, Hansa LLC's revenue for 2023 was 2.7 billion rubles, with a loss of 40 million rubles. In 2022, the company's revenue was 4.6 billion rubles, with a net profit of 500 million rubles. In 2023, Hansa LLC employed 44 people.

Hyper LLC was registered in October 1999 in St. Petersburg and is 98% owned by Maxim Plaksin and 2% by Yuri Shvydko. In 2023, revenue amounted to 9.8 billion rubles, with a net profit of 242 million rubles. Its website lists Samsung, Tefal, Karcher, and others as partners, in addition to Hansa.

The transfer of Hansa's business to a Russian distributor was confirmed in a conversation with Kommersant by Alexey Pogudalov, Commercial DIRECTOR of Holodilnik.ru. According to him, the company's remaining employees in Russia will continue to provide service, warranty, and post-warranty support for the equipment. The functions of importing Hansa-branded products, as well as their exclusive distribution, will be transferred to OOO Giper. According to the newspaper's source at a major retailer, this "will not significantly impact the availability of the brand's products in Russia due to the effective operation of parallel import mechanisms."

Jackie's brand founder Gusein Imanov noted that Hansa could lose 5-6% of its market share if the business is transferred. "The representative office sets prices based on the stated standard, regardless of how the equipment was delivered. However, the distributor will inflate prices to maintain a margin. Taking this into account, along with the logistics chain, prices for Hansa devices in Russia will increase by 15-20%, and their market share will shrink to 1-2%," the expert noted.

Following the start of Russia's special operation in Ukraine, many manufacturers of foreign household appliances and electronics have refused to continue production in Russia or supply the country. Among these companies are Bosch,APPLE , ASUS, LG Electronics, Ericsson, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Intel, Logitech, Sony, TSMC and others.

In December, Kommersant, citing sources, reported that the Ministry of Industry and Trade plans to require large electronics and home appliance chains (both offline and online ) to "dedicate shelf space" to Russian goods. According to one of the newspaper's sources, major marketplaces are already beginning to sign agreements with domestic electronics manufacturers to list their products on their platforms. He believes that "there will even be some requirements regarding the minimum share of the product range."

Izvestia reported last spring that United Russia deputies had drafted a bill on a "Russian shelf." At the time, it only applied to online stores: the plan was for Russian or Belarusian goods to occupy the top 50 search results. In October, the document was submitted to the government , according to Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Viktor Yevtukhov.