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The news feed is full of reports that the Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Rus plant, located in the city of Sestroretsk, near St. Petersburg, has resumed work. The event
As the Fontanka source reports with reference to the press service of the company that owns the factory, the company has emerged from a long standstill and is currently operating in one shift. In case anyone forgot, Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Rus was built in 2010 to produce cars in a full cycle with stamping, welding and painting of bodies. The total investment in the project by the Korean concern exceeded $ 1 billion, the capacity of the plant was 220,000 cars per year and the super popular Hyundai Solaris, Hyundai Creta and Kia Rio were produced here.
In March 2022, the company stopped due to problems with the supply of parts caused by Western sanctions against our country. At the end of the same year, the factory’s management was forced to lay off two-thirds of its employees, leaving approximately 800 people. At the end of December 2023, it became known that Hyundai was going to sell its brainchild to the company Art-Finance, owned by the ex-CEO of the Avilon dealer group Andrei Pavlovich.
This is a brief summary of the battle path of Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Rus, which for some time laid claim to the laurels of a leader in the Russian automotive industry. “Oh, how quickly worldly glory passes away,” the medieval German mystical philosopher Thomas von Kempen would say about this.
Now, in order. As it becomes clear, lately this is not a Hyundai plant at all, as it becomes owned by a Russian company. Moreover, under very strange circumstances, the sale price is only 10,000 rubles, with the right of the previous owner to buy it back within two years.
But let’s move on. According to the head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Denis Manturov, the assembly of cars at the St. Petersburg plant is expected to begin before mid-2024. So what is the “way out of the downtime”? It turns out that it involves staff training and equipment maintenance. Does this mean that after a year and a half of downtime, the staff completely forgot how to work, disqualifying themselves and the equipment was not maintained all this time, and now it has to be taken off the ground? ruins?
And then the next question: if we talk about restoring and adapting existing technological lines, then they should produce the same Korean sedans and crossovers for which these lines were originally designed. The buyback option offered to the Koreans also indicates this.
It will seem strange if all their robots are now lost and replaced, for example, by Chinese ones. And in two years all this will be given back to Hyundai, which will again have to invest a billion in dismantling someone else’s equipment, installing and setting up its own?
It looks like the puzzle is coming together. Coincidentally, while waiting for a radical change in the political situation, the factory is trying to maintain the production of Korean cars, and for this it comes up with some cunning solutions with the help of its Chinese brothers. But even here not everything is as simple as it seems at first glance.
Denis Manturov stated, among other things, that Art-Finance, as the potential owner of the Hyundai plant in Saint Petersburg, is already working with industrial partners on the possibility of an early restart of car production at this location. It would make sense to involve BAIC, which already has joint ventures with Hyundai-Kia, in this plan.
However, the most likely partner is… GAC, which partners with Toyota and Honda! Is it really possible that the entire operation will be carried out under the brand name of this company with a specific disregard for all the international rules that now only hinder us? In any case, I am not against it at all, but it is still difficult to believe in such a decision.
As the Fontanka source reports with reference to the press service of the company that owns the factory, the company has emerged from a long standstill and is currently operating in one shift. In case anyone forgot, Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Rus was built in 2010 to produce cars in a full cycle with stamping, welding and painting of bodies. The total investment in the project by the Korean concern exceeded $ 1 billion, the capacity of the plant was 220,000 cars per year and the super popular Hyundai Solaris, Hyundai Creta and Kia Rio were produced here.
In March 2022, the company stopped due to problems with the supply of parts caused by Western sanctions against our country. At the end of the same year, the factory’s management was forced to lay off two-thirds of its employees, leaving approximately 800 people. At the end of December 2023, it became known that Hyundai was going to sell its brainchild to the company Art-Finance, owned by the ex-CEO of the Avilon dealer group Andrei Pavlovich.
This is a brief summary of the battle path of Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Rus, which for some time laid claim to the laurels of a leader in the Russian automotive industry. “Oh, how quickly worldly glory passes away,” the medieval German mystical philosopher Thomas von Kempen would say about this.
Now, in order. As it becomes clear, lately this is not a Hyundai plant at all, as it becomes owned by a Russian company. Moreover, under very strange circumstances, the sale price is only 10,000 rubles, with the right of the previous owner to buy it back within two years.
But let’s move on. According to the head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Denis Manturov, the assembly of cars at the St. Petersburg plant is expected to begin before mid-2024. So what is the “way out of the downtime”? It turns out that it involves staff training and equipment maintenance. Does this mean that after a year and a half of downtime, the staff completely forgot how to work, disqualifying themselves and the equipment was not maintained all this time, and now it has to be taken off the ground? ruins?
And then the next question: if we talk about restoring and adapting existing technological lines, then they should produce the same Korean sedans and crossovers for which these lines were originally designed. The buyback option offered to the Koreans also indicates this.
It will seem strange if all their robots are now lost and replaced, for example, by Chinese ones. And in two years all this will be given back to Hyundai, which will again have to invest a billion in dismantling someone else’s equipment, installing and setting up its own?
It looks like the puzzle is coming together. Coincidentally, while waiting for a radical change in the political situation, the factory is trying to maintain the production of Korean cars, and for this it comes up with some cunning solutions with the help of its Chinese brothers. But even here not everything is as simple as it seems at first glance.
Denis Manturov stated, among other things, that Art-Finance, as the potential owner of the Hyundai plant in Saint Petersburg, is already working with industrial partners on the possibility of an early restart of car production at this location. It would make sense to involve BAIC, which already has joint ventures with Hyundai-Kia, in this plan.
However, the most likely partner is… GAC, which partners with Toyota and Honda! Is it really possible that the entire operation will be carried out under the brand name of this company with a specific disregard for all the international rules that now only hinder us? In any case, I am not against it at all, but it is still difficult to believe in such a decision.
Source: Avto Vzglyad
Donald Salinas is an experienced automobile journalist and writer for Div Bracket. He brings his readers the latest news and developments from the world of automobiles, offering a unique and knowledgeable perspective on the latest trends and innovations in the automotive industry.
