Which companies supply Russia with sanctioned tantalum capacitors for Corsair and Shahed UAVs and X-101 missiles – The Insider investigation.
It is noted that Russia is not able to produce tantalum capacitors, which are an important element of electronics and are used in the military industry and avionics, in particular in the Corsair and Shahed UAVs. Tantalum capacitors are produced by Kyocera AVX, Vishay, and KEMET Corporation. Their headquarters are located in the United States, but their products end up in Russia and then in Ukraine in the form of missiles.
Tantalum capacitors have high temperature resistance, which makes them indispensable in radio electronics, and higher capacitance than capacitors made of other materials for the same size.
Russia produces about 2% of the world’s tantalum ore, but Russian companies are not able to process it.
The Russian military-industrial complex, nuclear energy, and aerospace industries have always used imported parts.
In particular, Russia buys capacitors from the Japanese-American company Kyocera AVX, but, as journalists found out, they are made in El Salvador.
A significant part of the tantalum capacitors that came to Russia from China are marked “El Salvador” in the “country of origin” column. This means that the goods were produced there, and China is the exporter.
Another company whose capacitors are used in Russian weapons is the American Vishay. Last year, Russia received capacitors manufactured by the Israeli Vishay plant for about $1.3 million.
However, no shipments came directly from Israel. Capacitors came from Cyprus, Hungary, China, and Hong Kong.
The main supplier of Vishay capacitors to Russia is the St. Petersburg-based RIK Logistic, which acts only as an intermediary.
Another American manufacturer, Kemet (part of the Taiwanese corporation Yageo), is among the top three in terms of imports of tantalum capacitors to Russia.
Last year, $6 million worth of Kemet tantalum capacitors were imported to Russia.
These parts were manufactured in Mexico, but they first came to Hungary from Hong Kong and then were imported to Russia with the help of the Hungarian company Matrix Metal Group Kft.
Lithuanian brokers Vinges Terminalas and Autoverslo Logistika also participated in the supply of capacitors.
They not only prepared papers for customs, but, judging by the declarations available to journalists, imported parts to Lithuania to be shipped to Russia.