Kvant, the last Russian TV maker, just pulled the plug on itself

The Moscow Arbitration Court finally put an end to the saga of Kvant, granting the bankruptcy petition filed by DNS Retail. What was once the pride of local manufacturing, operating assembly lines in Voronezh and Zelenograd under the Irbis brand, is now officially insolvent.

The company's financial health collapsed under a mountain of debt exceeding 763 million rubles. By the time the legal proceedings kicked into high gear, a long line of creditors—including Yandex's Alisa Laboratory, BBK, and Ozon Credit—were already circling the carcass. The manufacturing operations stalled completely in early 2025, effectively killing a planned 1.8 billion ruble expansion project that was meant to turn the region into an electronics hub.

Before 2022, Kvant survived by acting as a local assembly point for giants like TCL and Xiaomi. Once the global supply chains dried up, the company struggled to justify its existence, proving that assembling parts you can no longer source is a terrible business model. Despite flirting with potential buyouts from Sber and Yandex, the company couldn't escape the math: making hardware at home is simply too expensive compared to importing.

This is what happens when state-mandated patriotism meets the brutal reality of a globalized supply chain. Kvant tried to play the role of the national champion, but in the end, it was just an expensive middleman waiting for parts that never arrived. It is truly shocking that an industry built on protectionism and limited access failed to compete with global giants. A textbook case of how to spend billions of rubles just to realize that shipping a finished TV from abroad is still the only way to get a decent picture.

Source: Kommersant