It was previously reported that the Korean company’s enterprise would be sold (with a buyback option within two years) to an as yet unnamed Russian investor .
The Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Rus (HMMR) plant is located in St. Petersburg. The company's management put it on downtime in the spring of 2022 due to a shortage of components. Later, this regime was extended several times, while at the end of last year the enterprise was partially restarted in order to produce parts, weld and paint bodies for Hyundai Solaris. The released batch was then sent to the assembly line of a plant in Almaty (Kazakhstan), where the final assembly of cars intended not for the Russian Federation was carried out.
Photo from the Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Rus plant (from the archive)
The process of dismissal of employees of the St. Petersburg plant of the Korean company started at the beginning of this year. Some employees are still on the company's staff. Now it has become known that the downtime at the Hyundai site has once again been extended until December 31, 2023. Interfax reports this with reference to the Employment Center of St. Petersburg.
It is known that the shutdown, now extended until 2024, will affect 502 employees at the HMMR site. Let us remind you that until the spring of 2022, the staff of the St. Petersburg Hyundai plant numbered 2,537 people. Let us remind you that the production capacity of the Hyundai plant, which began operating in 2010, is designed to produce more than 200 thousand cars per year.
Previously, this site established the production of Hyundai Solaris and Creta passenger cars, in demand in the Russian Federation, as well as Kia Rio and Rio X. In addition, the list of local assets of the Koreans includes a motor plant, as well as the St. Petersburg site, which previously belonged to the American concern General Motors – Hyundai bought it back in 2020 (the company planned to expand production in the Russian Federation).
In September of this year, it became known that Hyundai was going to sell its St. Petersburg plant: the Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, Denis Manturov, spoke about this. Then he noted that the management of the Korean company was going to sell its local assets with a buyback option within two years (a similar decision was made, for example, by Renault, Nissan and Mazda).
Denis Manturov also added that “all decisions have already been formed” and that an agreement will be reached “in the near future” time,” however, a more precise date was not given at that time. Since then, there has been no new official information on the potential deal. It was previously reported that an unnamed “local investor” was acting as the buyer of the HMMR site.
It was assumed that the management of the Kaliningrad multi-brand enterprise Avtotor, which had previously collaborated with the Korean manufacturer and produced several Hyundai and Kia models. In addition, the large dealer holding company Avilon may also be a potential buyer of the Russian Hyundai plant. We will obviously find out the details later.
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