MAZ plant preparing shipment to Russia worth 3.7 bln rubles

Minsk. July 10 (Interfax) - The Minsk Automobile Plant (MAZ) has prepared a contract for the supply of vehicles and chassis to Russian partner enterprises for 3.7 billion rubles, Vladimir Yanushko, Deputy General Director and Marketing Director of MAZ said.

"The Russian market is key for Belarus. Now we have prepared a contract for a new shipment of more than 900 pieces of equipment (trucks, chassis); the contract amount is about 3.7 billion Russian rubles," Yanushko said on the sidelines of the Innoprom - 2023 international industrial exhibition in Yekaterinburg, as quoted by the BelTA state agency.

"Supplying chassis to Russian partner factories has a great future; 37 partner factories with which we work in Russia have given us the opportunity to increase the supply of chassis this year," he said.

Yanushko said that last year MAZ supplied 2,100 chassis units under partnership programs with Russian plants. "Over these six months, we have already sold about 2,000 units, so we expect that this year about 4,000 units will be shipped under these programs," he said.

Commenting on the impact of Western sanctions on MAZ, the deputy general director said that "they are not catastrophic. Serious issues related to the adaptation of a number of new components and, above all, the import substitution program that we have carried out, have allowed us to operate confidently without reducing production volumes and growth rates," he said.

In the first half of the year MAZ produced 3,300 trucks, which is 300 units [10%] more than in the first half of last year, he said. Exports in the first half of the year increased 27%.

MAZ, the management company of Belavtomaz holding, manufactures trucks and passenger vehicles, buses and minibuses, and special vehicles. It is one of the largest manufacturers of automotive equipment in the CIS. In Russia, the company is represented by more than 60 dealers and more than 150 authorized service centers.

In March of this year, the United States imposed sanctions against MAZ. The company has been under EU sanctions since June 2021.

Earlier, First Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Nikolai Snopkov said that due to the expansion of the Chinese automobile industry into the Russian market, the share of MAZ there has decreased from 8.9% to 3.5%.