NPM Silmet, an industrial company based in Sillamäe, has received European backing for a large expansion, and with it a political condition from Tallinn. ERR News reports that the European Commission on Friday named Silmet 2.0 among 46 new strategic projects meant to secure the Union's supply of critical raw materials.
Silmet 2.0 is a plan of investment and development that would fit the plant's infrastructure and processes to raw material from new sources. Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said that the status brings an obligation. We will work with the European Commission to set a clear deadline for NPM Silmet to stop using Russian raw materials,
he said, adding that the company has to move to other suppliers quickly.
The background is a decision earlier in the week. At Estonia's request a Russian company that supplies rare earth metals to Silmet was left out of the 22nd package of EU sanctions against Russia, which still awaits formal approval. The Foreign Ministry explains that the plant has a central place in Europe's supply chain: what it makes goes into electronics, medicine, cars, aircraft and defence products.
Tsahkna said that Europe has to build up its own production and find new sources of supply while it keeps up pressure on Russia through sanctions, and that Estonia continues to support strong sanctions.
Source: ERR News, . The text above is our own summary; the words in quotation marks are the source's.
What this means for an Estonian entrepreneur
The case shows a pattern that reaches smaller companies too: public support and a strategic status now arrive together with conditions on where a business buys. An Estonian manufacturer that depends on one supplier in a sanctioned country should look at what its supply contracts say about ending or changing the deliveries, before a deadline is set for it by others.
A company that has to change a supplier first needs to know what its present contracts allow; we review a contract and write down the points that need attention. Contract review