Production of commercial vehicles resumed at the former Volvo plant in Kaluga

Now Ural Next trucks are rolling off the assembly line of this enterprise. It is planned to produce 50 cars by the end of this year.

Volvo Trucks put its Kaluga plant on downtime last spring. The media indicated that the Swedish concern was thinking about selling Russian assets back in the fall of 2022. Let us recall that it became known then that a decision had been made to “adapt the business and begin laying off employees,” but the real change of ownership occurred later.

Photo from the production of Next trucks at the AMO plant in Kaluga

In early September 2023, information appeared about that the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation has identified an investor to whom the local assets of the Swedish concern Volvo will be transferred; The department did not specify who exactly they were talking about. Later it became known that the Russian group of companies Industrial Investments became the owner of the enterprise in Kaluga.

The governor of the Kaluga region, Vladislav Shapsha, spoke about the fact that the former Russian Volvo plant was restarted in his Telegram channel. He noted that the Kaluga machine-building enterprise AMO, part of the Industrial Investments Group of Companies, began production of large-capacity off-road vehicles.

Judging by the photographs that accompany the message from the head of the region, the production of Ural Next trucks has been established at the former Volvo site (since 2015, their production has been established at the facilities of UralAZ in Miass). Vladislav Shapsha added that by the end of the year the Kaluga plant “plans to put 50 vehicles into production”, and also spoke about plans to reach the production volume of 2000 trucks of the Next line in 2024.

The governor also said that the AMO company plans to expand the line of cars produced at the Kaluga plant in the future. According to Andrey Aleksandrov, CEO of Industrial Investments, the group of companies is now continuing negotiations with foreign manufacturers, although who exactly is acting as potential partners has not yet been announced.

As Interfax notes, Industrial Investments previously stated that the Kaluga plant is “strategically focused” on the production of domestic freight transport. At the same time, the Group of Companies added that they expect “an expansion of the range of products in partnership with Russian and Chinese automakers, localization of foreign vehicles and components, as well as the creation of a new brand of Russian trucks.”

Recall that production The capacity of the former Russian Volvo enterprise, launched in 2009, is designed to produce 15 thousand trucks per year. Previously, the production of commercial vehicles of the Volvo and Renault brands was established here. The heavy trucks were intended both for the Russian market and for other EAEU countries.