Spayka Requests Government Support as Valuable Agricultural Products Spoil in Trucks

On November 1, 2019, the Spayka company issued a statement indicating that its trucks carrying agricultural products requiring special storage have been stuck at the Upper Lars customs checkpoint in Russia for 16 days. However, there is no clear explanation or certainty regarding the reasons for the delay in customs clearance and the inability to allow the dispatch of the cargo into Russian territory.

Later, the Ministry of Economy of Armenia announced that they had communicated with the officials of the North Caucasus Customs, who informed them that the reason for the temporary detention of the vehicle is that the customs risk management system deemed the cargo to be high risk due to its classification on the sanctions list. According to their information, samples have been sent to a relevant laboratory to determine the origin of the cargo.

Today, November 1, 2019, employees at the Upper Lars customs checkpoint verbally informed the company's truck driver that they could not allow the cheese to enter Russian territory and would be sending the cargo back to Armenia because they received the results of the examination via email, which indicated that the country of origin of the cheese was noted as "Armenia, the Middle East, Southeast Europe."