I am currently working on series of articles for one British business magazine. It involves interviewing directors or representatives of some of the biggest companies in Russia and other FSU countries. I conduct these interviews on the phone from home obviously. After interviewing about a couple of dozen companies so far, I noticed that recent economic crisis has seemed to do them more good than bad, especially for the big companies in Russia. Everyone says the same thing. The fact that at first sales did decline a little, but then they noticed an increase in demand for many Russian products both from Russian consumers and from the west. It seems that the price of the rouble in relation to other more expensive currencies made it cheaper to buy many types of supplies in Russia. Most of the companies I have talked to so far are actively working on projects to conquer new markets. Many recently signed new big contracts to export their products. And producers of helicopters, for example, even said that they are as overwhelmed with orders as they always have been and have built up an about 2 year waiting list.
Raw materials, like coal for example, are seemed to be bought by China a lot. And more complicated products such as processed egg products or fluoropolymers are going more often to Europe. The Middle East seems to buy from them through Europe. But few companies are starting to recognise it as a separate market with a potential and have made plans to sell to Middle Eastern consumers directly. Some of the companies that I talked to are so huge, they are either already world’s leaders or have less than few competitors in other counties. Some of them said that they even actively participate in forming the legislation that would benefit them as producers. Which I guess it is a quite normal thing to do for big companies, but for me it is all very new and I find it very interesting.
I never wrote on business topics for money before, especially not on so many different types of industries, so I learned a lot of new things recently. For example: did you know that mayonnaise and crabmeat sticks are made of processed eggs? I didn’t.