Kamaz interested in organization of assembly production in China
MOSCOW. May 15 (Interfax) - OJSC Kamaz is interested in the organization of automobile assembly plant in China, Kamaz CEO Sergei Kogogin told journalists.
"Today we are seriously looking at China, where clusters for the production of automobile components have already been created, which we are already using for Russian production in Naberezhnye Chelny. Of course, in this case we will strive to make production, to work on those sites in order to avoid forex risks," he said, underlining that this concerned the possibility of organizing production there.
He said that Kamaz is increasing its export activity in order to mitigate the negative effects on the domestic market. "We are seriously counting on large contracts, which were prepared for the last six months," the CEO said. "We will conduct work in the north of South America - Venezuela, Columbia, Peru. Mainly our products there are connected with the bus program, we are actively selling bus chasses. It turns out that we began to fill the niche for 10-meter buses there," he said. Speaking about plans for the organization in South America of truck assembly production, Kogogin said that the company still is considering this project, but for now there have been no changes.
He said that Kamaz has production in India. "Now the conditions have been created, where we actually redesigned the car and have localized 90% of production in India - we avoided forex risks. Actually, now only the cabin and engine come from Russia, the rest of the parts we are making with suppliers from India," he said.
Kogogin said that the plan for the company's exports for 2015 amounts to 6,000 automobiles. "In the plan we set 6,000 automobiles. The task that stands before the foreign trade company is another two [thousand]. It was not officially announced or confirmed by the board of directors, this is our domestic plan. It is necessary to understand that our main market is CIS countries, and that crisis events exist not only in Russia," he said.
Kogogin did not comment on the forecast for financial indicators for the six months.
OJSC Kamaz is the largest Russian producer of trucks. The company's sales in 2014 fell by 11.2% to 38,900 automobiles, including the 32,600 automobiles sold on the Russian market (down by 14.4%).
