Lithuania’s oldest beer brewer is exploring the Taiwanese market in the wake of a naming row over a newly opened Taiwanese representative office in Vilnius that led to a ban on products from the Baltic state in China.
During an interview earlier this month, Volfas Engelman chief executive officer Marius Horbacauskas said that his company had entered the Taiwan market in the middle of 2020, and while sales were poor for the first year, with only 8,000 liters sold, there was a boom last year, with beer exports to Taiwan increasing 23-fold.
Horbacauskas said he is thrilled that Taiwanese like his company’s products.
“For us, it is a very big motivation,” he said.
The skyrocketing sales might have something to do with a campaign launched by Taipei to support Lithuanian products, which have been boycotted in China.
Ties between Vilnius and Beijing soured after Lithuania in November last year allowed Taiwan to open an overseas representative office that included the word “Taiwanese” in its name.
Beijing has sought to impose a political cost on Lithuania for allowing the office to use the name.
Recent measures have included recalling its ambassador to Lithuania, downgrading diplomatic relations, expelling the Lithuanian ambassador to China, as well as suspending direct freight rail services and banning Lithuanian products from entering the Chinese market.
To show solidarity with Lithuania and to offset Chinese economic pressure on the Baltic state, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited Taiwanese in the lead-up to Christmas to support Lithuanian businesses and buy Volfas Engelman’s beers.
Representative to Lithuania Eric Huang (黃鈞耀) visited the brewery late last month to discuss further expansion of the company’s exports to Taiwan.
Horbacauskas said that the company’s products entered the Chinese market seven years ago.
Last year, it sold 1.2 million liters of beer in China and the business was growing until it all stopped in October, he said.
“All of the orders till the end of the year were canceled,” he said. “Our partner [in China] said that they cannot buy, because the Lithuanian products are [being] kicked out from the retail shelves, [because] products of Lithuanian origin are not welcome anymore.”
He said that he is not a political person and was not sure what the future held for the company in China.
However, “if we see that some people love us more, love should be mutual, so if we have similar values, why don’t we focus on that side,” he said, referring to Taiwan.
Horbacauskas said that he is proud of his company’s beers and would love to share them with Taiwanese.
“It’s our passion which we put into the products,” he said, adding that drinking beer is a “universal language.”
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