Clarifying the Facts: Our Response to Recent Media Coverage on KINEX BEARINGS Exports to Russia

Recently, our company has been approached by media outlets with questions concerning the export of bearings to Russia. We would like to issue the following statement in response:

Our company KINEX BEARINGS, a.s. in accordance with the measures taken stopped its business activities in the Russian market and since 01/2023 we have not sold any of our products to Russian customers, despite the fact that we were a long-established reputable supplier of bearings applied for civil purposes in the Russian market, especially in the field of automotive and railway industry, with a significant market share, and the cessation of our business activities in this market caused us significant financial losses, including the threat to the retention of employment.

It is therefore true that our company has not exported any bearings to the Russian market since 01/2023. It should be noted here that, first of all, it is questionable whether these bearings are KINEX bearings at all, as we have recently seen an increase in cases of infringement of our intellectual property in the form of the production and distribution of non-original bearings under the KINEX brand in a number of markets, not only in Asia, despite the many measures we have taken, including customs measures, to try to prevent such activities.

In order to limit re-export activities as much as possible also in relation to compliance with the terms of our sales and distribution policy, we have with our end customers as well as distributors from 3rd countries, which of course we screen using standard tools including verification of available data and references, contracted an export clause stating that according to the applicable regulations it is forbidden to sell, deliver, transfer or export, directly or indirectly, goods that are subject to sanction measures and could contribute to the strengthening of industrial capacities, to a person or entity for use in the Russian market, applied as a specific condition in customer orders, customer contracts as well as general terms and conditions, as part of the measures in relation to the export restrictions in force, the implementation of which we have also communicated directly to the Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic. On this basis, we consider the possibility of re-export of the above-mentioned products on the Russian market to be unlikely.

Such information is damaging the reputation of our company and our brand name KINEX as they are published while not proven and we are mostly not even contacted by the publishing party regarding the opportunity to comment on the authenticity of the information. Therefore, we are taking steps to stop the spread of this information.