Russian Hyundai plant no longer idle
ST. PETERSBURG. Jan 9 (Interfax) - The St. Petersburg automobile plant belonging to South Korea's Hyundai (Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Rus LLC) has emerged from a period of downtime.
"Downtime has not been extended. We are engaged in personnel training and equipment maintenance," the company's press service told Interfax.
Earlier it was reported that the car plant had suspended vehicle production as of March 1, 2022 due to difficulties with component supplies.
It is expected that the plant will be sold for a symbolic price to the Art-Finance company, which is close to the Avilon dealer holding, which had previously purchased Volkswagen's Russian assets.
"Hyundai is currently negotiating with Art-Finance on the details of the transaction," the automaker's statement said.
Meanwhile, Hyundai plans to continue to provide after-sales service and other services to its customers in Russia.
The transaction price was not specified in the company's statement. It was approved at a symbolic 140 thousand won, or approximately 10,000 rubles at the current exchange rate, South Korean daily the Chosun Ilbo said.
Art-Finance LLC, mentioned as the buyer of the assets in the Hyundai statement, was registered in Moscow in February 2023. Its main owner is CEO of the Avilon car dealer group, Andrei Pavlovich.
In May 2023, Art-Finance acquired the assets of the Russian representative office of Volkswagen Group Rus LLC, including the local Volkswagen Components and Service LLC, Scania Leasing LLC, Scania Finance LLC and Scania Insurance LLC, which it controlled. VW reported in its financial statements that these assets were sold for 125 million euro. Later, the legal entities were renamed in a rebranding campaign to create an automobile group from the newly acquired companies called AGR.
Kaliningrad's Avtotor was also interested in Hyundai's Russian assets at one point, including its car plant in St. Petersburg. After ending cooperation with its own South Korean partner and German BMW, Avtotor is now developing cooperation with Chinese brands BAIC, Kaiyi, and SWM in its home region.
The Hyundai plant has been operating in St. Petersburg since 2010. Production of cars there was suspended as of March 2022 due to difficulties with the supply of components. Until the spring of 2022, the enterprise, with a capacity of more than 200,000 cars per year, produced the Hyundai Solaris, Hyundai Creta, Kia Rio and Kia Rio X-Line models. At the end of 2022, the company saw revenues decrease 75.6% to 50.3 billion rubles, and had an 18.8 billion ruble net loss against 11.2 billion rubles of net profit the year before.