OREANDA-NEWS  Russian electronics importers, whose business has been seriously complicated by the consequences of the military actions in Ukraine, are developing a new market — the supply of equipment. In particular, the store operator re:The Store, which used to be Apple's premium reseller in Russia, has opened a shop for lathes and milling machines MachIndex. The Inventive Retail Group, which owns it, confirms the import of only machines from "friendly countries". But at the same time, the company is officially looking for engineers with experience working with German and Japanese systems. Inventive Retail Group (IRG, part of Lanit Group of Companies), managing retail stores re:Store, Samsung and the World of Cubes (a former Lego retailer in Russia), decided to enter the desktop machine market. "Kommersant" found that on the domain machindex.ru registered to one of the group's legal entities (Restor LLC) in December 2022, at the end of March a website appeared with offers to order machines for small businesses and industry, as well as numerical control systems (CNC). Kommersant called the number listed on the website: the MachIndex sales manager confirmed that the equipment is available and available in Moscow.

We are talking primarily about desktop machines used by amateurs and small businesses. They are used in the DIY sector, for artisanal or small-scale production, in vocational education. In Russian stores, desktop lathes cost 60-500 thousand rubles, milling machines — 50-250 thousand rubles; some models of the initial class are presented on marketplaces.

The IRG called MachIndex "a startup that will not enter the group's management structure." "Due to the sanctions and the withdrawal from the market of the main manufacturers of metalworking equipment, we saw an appropriate business opportunity," the company says. The Lanit Group did not respond to Kommersant.

According to the register of declarations of conformity, Invent Technologies, which belongs to the Cyprus ReStore Retail Group Limited, has been declaring the import of lathes and milling machines, milling cutters and drills for them, as well as laser metal cutting machines to the EAEU countries since December 2022.

All products, as follows from the documents, are produced by Chinese companies. At the same time, on March 29 , IRG published on hh.ru a vacancy for a service engineer with experience working with CNC systems from German Siemens and Heidenhain. Among the advantages is the experience of working with the Japanese Mitsubishi CNC.

The IRG assured Kommersant that MachIndex will work "in accordance with Russian and international legislation", supplying equipment "manufactured in friendly countries."