AGR group, China's Defetoo complete refurbishment of former GM plant in St. Petersburg
ST. PETERSBURG. Feb 26 (Interfax) - Russia's AGR Holding and China's Defetoo are expanding their strategic partnership and completing the technical refurbishment of AGR's St. Petersburg site and the former plant of U.S. company General Motors in Shushary, AGR's press service reported.
The equipment has already been installed at the plant and will now be set up in order to launch the full production cycle.
The press release says that the plant acquired by AGR in Shushary in 2024 essentially consisted of empty buildings, where the equipment had been fully dismantled, with no engineering or technological infrastructure, and the production architecture and technology required a full overhaul. In June 2025, the site received the first container delivering steel structures for the installation of heavy production lines. As part of this project, around 600 containers of equipment and technological systems have been delivered.
"As such, the new production facility was set up in less than eight months," AGR said.
The plans are to use the new site to produce automobiles of the Jeland brand. It will produce up to 100,000 vehicles each year after the full ramp-up.
It has been reported that AGR Holding and partner Defetoo planned to localize production of Jeland automobiles in Russia in the first half of 2026. As such, Jeland will become the partners' second joint project after Tenet, which involved localizing production at the former Volkswagen site in Kaluga in summer last year.
Last year, the Russian Automobile Telegram channel reported that AGR planned to localize the production of Jeland automobiles at the former GM site in St. Petersburg, which it owns. The prototypes for these automobiles were to be models from Jaecoo, a sub-brand of the Chinese Chery, which are also the basis for the Tenet crossovers which are becoming increasingly popular on the Russian market.
According to a presentation of the Russian Industry and Trade Ministry on the current status of Russia's automobile production sites at the end of 2025, seen by Interfax, AGR planned to localize production of the Jaecoo J7 and Jaecoo J8 models at its St. Petersburg site.
