Drinks with Russian flavor are back on Ukrainian shelves. How Russian tea companies “changed their shoes”

By 2022, 40% of the tea market in Ukraine was occupied by companies with Russian ultimate beneficial owners: Orimi Ukraine and May Ukraine Company. These names mean little to consumers, but almost everyone knows the brands they owned: Greenfield, TESS, Princess Nuri, Maisky and Curtis.

After the start of the great war, the listed brands of tea disappeared from supermarket shelves - Ukrainian factories allegedly stopped their work, writes the Economic Truth publication. At the same time, the state began the process of confiscating the property of Russians: construction factories, shopping centers, production of washing powders and mineral water.

A similar fate should have befallen tea producers, but this did not happen. The manufacturer of “Maisky” “changed its shoes in the air” and set up production under new brands. The manufacturer Greenfield “lay low” and subsequently resumed clandestine production. The EP publication made sure that the plant was operating and found where its products were sold.

Drinks with Russian flavor

In 2023, Ukrainians purchased UAH 7-7.8 billion worth of tea, two interlocutors in the FMCG market shared with EP, this is approximately 11.6-12 thousand tons of tea.

A study by Pro-Consulting shows that 68% of Ukrainians’ purchases are for black tea, 17% for green tea. The rest comes from flavored, fruit and herbal teas. At the same time, in Ukraine, only 10% of teas are produced in a full cycle, mainly herbal. The rest are imported and packaged in Ukrainian factories. Raw materials are purchased from India, China, Sri Lanka and other countries.

In 2021, more than 100 tea brands were represented on the local market. Factors influencing consumer choice were taste, advertising campaigns and brand positioning, Pro-Consulting notes.

Almost half of the market before the great war was shared by such companies as Orimi Ukraine LLC and May Ukraine Company LLC. According to one of the interlocutors in the FMCG market, Orimi accounted for 29% of the market, and May - 15%. “Orimi Ukraine” is a “daughter” of the Russian “Orimi Trade” of Russians Sergei Kasyanenko and Alexander Evnevich. The Ukrainian company, through the Cyprus offshore company Rimexo Limited, was registered to British citizen Veronica Kasyanenko.

In Ukraine, the Russian subsidiary produced teas under the brands Greenfield, TESS, Princess Nuri, Princess Kandy, Princess Gita and Princess Java. It also produced coffee products - Jardin, Piazza del Caffe and Jockey.

“Company May Ukraine” produced teas under the brands “Maisky”, “Lisma”, Curtis, Richard and Coffesso coffee. In July 2022, the ultimate beneficial owner of this company was a Russian with a Maltese “golden” passport, Igor Lisinenko.

Register data indicates that indirect influence on a legal entity is exercised through May LLC, located in the city of Fryazino, Moscow Region. Lisinenko himself was previously a deputy from United Russia.

Punished, but not taken away

In 2022, Ukrainian government authorities took certain steps regarding the mentioned companies. At the request of the prosecutor’s office, the Podolsky District Court of Kyiv arrested the accounts of Orimi Ukraine, and transferred the UAH 52 million placed on them in January 2023 to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

In December 2022, the Antimonopoly Committee fined the company UAH 80 million for concealing information about the family ties of Veronica and Sergei Kasyanenko. At the same time, Orimi Ukraine LLC changed its name to TS Trade LLC. The ultimate beneficiaries, management, company address and production capacity remain the same.

In February 2024, the Solomensky District Court of Kyiv lifted the seizure of the property of TS Trade, imposed in April 2022. The court ruling states that now the beneficiaries of the manufacturer through the Cypriot Rimexo Limited are German citizen Dmitry Gorilovsky and Ukrainian citizen Andrey Tulyev.

“As a result of the seizure of property, the economic activities of TS Trade LLC were suspended, which has negative consequences not only for the enterprise, but also deprives the country’s budget of significant revenue in the form of taxes and fees and threatens the dismissal of about 1 thousand workers,” - says the court decision.

Why didn’t the state confiscate the assets of Orimi Ukraine? There have been such attempts. The head of the Asset Search and Management Agency (ARMA), Elena Duma, told the EP that the investigating judge of the Solomensky District Court in November 2023 transferred the property of Orimi Trade LTD LLC and Eximtrade LLC to the management of ARMA.

Both companies are 95% owned by Rimexo Limited. True, the authorized capital of Orimi Trade LTD is 9 thousand UAH, and Eximtrade is 46 thousand UAH. The first has patents for 136 trademarks, in particular Greenfield and Jockey.

The tea factory itself in the village of Trebukhov in the Kiev region is registered with TS Trade, whose capital is UAH 16 million. The prosecutor’s appeal with the corresponding court ruling on the transfer of assets of Orimi Ukraine LLC and TS Trade LLC to management was not received by ARMA, the Duma explained.

Director of the Department of State Registration of the Ministry of Justice Vyacheslav Khardikov explained to the ED that no proposals to apply sanctions to the mentioned companies from the Verkhovna Rada, the President, the Cabinet of Ministers or the Security Service of Ukraine were received for consideration by the National Security and Defense Council.

“If a sanction in the form of blocking assets is applied to these individuals, the Ministry of Justice will appeal to the High Anti-Corruption Court,” Khardikov said.

The Office of the President and the State Bureau of Investigation did not respond to the ED’s request. The EP’s interlocutor in the President’s Office said that “the issue of Russian tea producers is being studied.” “We are collecting evidence, meeting with the SBU, work is underway in this direction,” the interlocutor replied.

Clandestine production, clandestine sale

One of the interlocutors at the market told the EP journalist that the plant for the production of Greenfield and Princesses continues to operate. “We see that they continue to order packaging from printing houses,” he notes. At the same time, the official website of TS Trade does not work, and no one answers the company’s phone numbers listed in the registers.

An EP journalist went to Trebukhov near Brovary and made sure that the windows of the TS Trade factory were lit, cars were parked on the premises, and employee bicycles were parked near the checkpoint.

Security guards sit in booths near the barriers, surveillance cameras are working, and the area is cleaned and well-groomed. The fact that the factory is operating was confirmed by two local residents with whom the EP journalist spoke.

If an enterprise produces products, then there must be a distribution channel. The next step was to search for places selling teas with popular names. Orimi products have not been sold on the shelves of national retail chains since the spring of 2022.

That is why the EP journalist visited the Volyn wholesale base in Kyiv - one of the well-known centers of “gray” trade in products, goods and contraband in the capital. Packages of Greenfield, TESS and Princess Noori teas were found at once and in several locations.

The manufacturer indicated on the packages is TS Trade LLC, Trebukhov village. Release date: November and December 2023. According to saleswomen, after the start of the great war, suppliers stopped supplies of these teas, but they resumed in 2023.

According to the Youcontrol system, the revenue of TS Trade (Orimi Ukraine) in 2023 amounted to UAH 448 million. In 2021, the figure was four times higher: UAH 1.6 billion.

A market source said that in 2022, Orimi Ukraine lost its leadership in the industry, holding 7% of the market. In the second half of 2023, TS Trade began shipping tea again to all regions of the country.

“Most large national retailers refused to take these products, but many regional networks and distributors resumed cooperation with TS Trade. Now these products are sold and bought freely throughout Ukraine in significant volumes, not always transparently, so it is not possible to name the market share today,” says the interlocutor.

According to the data available to the editors, among the chains that continue to sell Russian tea are Ideal, Argon (Grosh), MegaMarket, Rost, Class, Ambar, Sammarket, Veselka "

Changed my shoes in the air

The situation with Igor Lisinenko’s May Ukraine Company differs from the TS Trade case. In April 2022, the company received a new name - Tripoli Solntse LLC and a new beneficiary (Karlen Stepanyan through the Armenian company Kochari International) and continued to produce tea under new brands.

The address of production facilities (the city of Obukhov) and the chief accountant have not changed. The revenue of the May Ukraine Company in 2021 amounted to UAH 540 million, and the Tripoli Sun in 2023 - UAH 315 million, Youcontrol data shows.

On supermarket shelves, products are sold under the brands Sherlock Secrets, Tea Moments, Tripoli Solntse, and Tea Family. In addition, the Trypillian Solntse facilities produce teas for supermarkets’ own brands, in particular “Svoya Liniya” and “Reasonable Choice” for ATB.

The share of the Tripoli Solntse company in the market is now 8%, according to calculations from a second source - 5-6%. “There has been a purely formal renaming of the company; it operates the same way as before the invasion. In all other respects, the situation is the same as with TS Trade,” says EP’s interlocutor familiar with the state of affairs in the company.

The EP sent a request to Tripoli Solntse LLC with a request to explain what prompted Stepanyan to purchase the plant from Lisinenko and what other business the Armenian entrepreneur is engaged in. At the time of publication, no response had been received.

The head of the ARMA Duma and a representative of the Ministry of Justice provided the same answers regarding the May of Ukraine Company as for the TS Trade: no appeals from the prosecutor were received, and the National Security and Defense Council did not receive any proposals to impose sanctions.