Kamaz acquires small stake in automaker Aurus
MOSCOW. Feb 10 (Interfax) - PJSC Kamaz has acquired a 0.5% stake in the automaker Aurus.
The corresponding changes were recorded in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities on February 7.
Previously, a similar stake was owned by Sollers Group, which sold its 0.5% share in Aurus to Hit Motors Rus at the end of April 2024. Sollers remained an industrial partner of the project after the deal and continued to provide welding and painting services for Aurus bodies, the company's press service said.
Hit Motors Rus LLC was registered in Moscow in July 2022. The owner of 99% of its shares is the Kazakh company High End Assembly Technologies Motors LLP, while the remaining 1% belongs to Hans Peter Moser, the CEO of the Moscow-based Moskvich Automobile Plant (a former Renault facility). A few years earlier, Moser led the project to develop Kamaz's K5 truck lineup. Hit Motors Rus owns a 51% stake in the manufacturer of Kamaz's Compass LCVs (Trax Vostok Rus LLC, formerly a Kamaz joint venture with Daimler). As of the end of 2023, the company also owned a 50% stake in Volga Industrial Engines LLC, a joint venture with China's Weichai.
Kamaz's press service previously said that the group is not a participant in Hit Motors Rus LLC. The company declined to comment on Kamaz's direct involvement in Aurus.
The exact ownership structure of Aurus LLC is currently undisclosed. According to the latest available data, in 2024 Aurus's main shareholders were the state-owned NAMI, which is subordinate to the Industry and Trade Ministry (63.5%), and the Arab fund Tawazun (36%), which joined the company's capital in 2019 with an investment of 110 million euros.
The Aurus project began over ten years ago, when it was known as Cortege. At the time, the government instructed the company to develop a family of vehicles on a single modular platform for transporting top state officials. To implement and scale the project, Aurus LLC was created at the end of 2017, being initially owned by NAMI (75%) and Sollers (25%), which then subsequently reduced their shares in favor of the Arab Tawazun fund. In the project's early years, small batches of Aurus cars were assembled only at NAMI facilities. The serial production of Aurus Senat sedans in Yelabuga started in May 2021. The start of production of Aurus Komendant SUVs was announced just over one year later.
Kommersant reported in February 2024 that Aurus could establish the assembly of luxury cars at the facilities of the former St. Petersburg Toyota plant, which NAMI owns through Shushary-Avto LLC. Deputy Prime Minister and Industry and Trade Ministry Denis Manturov later confirmed these plans to journalists. He said that Aurus wanted to establish production in St. Petersburg together with foreign industry partners. "The first industrially assembled samples will be ready at the end of the year. There will be a fairly wide range. At least four in total," Manturov said.
The Shushary-Avto company was headed up in January 2024 by General Director of Aurus LLC Andrei Pankov (a former senior manager at Renault in Russia). He was the general director of JSC North Star Automobile Plant registered in St. Petersburg from the end of 2023 to the beginning of March 2024, the owner of 100% of which is Irina Rostova, beneficiary and now the general director of the company. Kommersant sources suggested that Kamaz, already acting as a technological partner of Moskvich, could also help with the organization of Aurus production in St. Petersburg. However, an interlocutor close to Kamaz did not confirm this to Kommersant. JSC Severnaya Zvezda Automobile Plant began the process of liquidation in August 2024.