"Zastava Arms" and "Remington" discontinued cooperation due to financial crisis - export to US market through new mediator

The CEO of "Zastava Arms", Rade Gromović, has revealed the the Kragujevac-based company and "Remington" have recently agreed, to the initiative of the Americans, to discontinue cooperation until more favorable market terms are created for business relations between the two companies.

- The stoppage of cooperation with "Remington" represents a big impact on the factory's operations since this year's export of our arms into the USA will be half as big as planned, but we had to understand the difficulties that our partner is faced with. We hope that the cooperation with "Remington" will be resumed as soon as the conditions are created for that and, until then, we are going to export arms to the US market through company EA Armory. Negotiations with that company have ended recently and the draft contract on cooperation with that company is being harmonized. According to the draft contract, "Zastava Arms" should export about 2.2m USD worth of hunting carbines, pistols CZ 999 and M 88, small-caliber rifles and rifles "black arrow" and "kalashnikov" into USA in 2009. That is much less than the foreign currency inflow that we achieved in 2006 thanks to cooperation with "Remington" - says Gromović.

Financial crisis has endangered export of "Zastava's" hunting and sports arms and arms for personal defense not only to the USA, but also to other foreign markets, first of all, to western European countries. This can be supported by the fact that this year's export of Zastava's arms into the countries of Western Europe is 33% smaller than in 2007.

- Our opinion is that our foreign currency inflow in 2008 will amount to 26.7m USD instead of projected 30m USD due to global financial crisis, which is a very good export result when having in mind current circumstances - Gromović points out and explains that that solid foreign currency balance has been achieved thanks to the delivery of "Zastava's" infantry arms to the UN forces and export to Iraq, Afghanistan and other war-stricken countries.