Russia’s retail market for automobile spare parts, including motor oils, is facing supply shortages, according to Autodoc.ru, the country’s largest online retailer of car parts.
The firm, which also operates stores across Russia, issued a statement Monday saying that supply of a number of items, such as brake pads and motor oils, decreased by up to 20 percent from January to October of this year. The firm collects information about stocks of products from Russia’s big auto part distributors and warehouses.
“At the onset of 2021, warehouses offered around 100 brands of motor oil on average, now they offer around 70 brands,” said Vladislav Solovyev, head of Autodoc.ru. “We observe a similar situation regarding brake pads or sparkplugs.”
Autodoc cited several reasons for the shortages, including logistics problems, cost run-ups for raw materials such as base oils and metals, fluctuations in exchange rates, semiconductor shortages and pent-up demand that has exceeded expectations.
“At the moment, we observe seasonal issues for some product segments,” Solovyev said. “For example, in preparation for wintertime, Russian motorists are raiding stores for sparkplugs, and we observe increased demand in lubricants, car batteries or electrical supply parts.”
The company noted that COVID-19 infections are again rising in Russia, and it predicted that economic conditions will worsen if the government takes new measures to contain the disease, such as imposing stay-at-home orders.
“If this happens, people will use their cars less, and to the extent that marketers are careful to not oversupply spare parts for future use, it would [enable] warehouses to replenish stocks if the demand is slack.”
The firm expects shortages of automotive electronic parts to worsen due to a growing global deficit of semiconductors.