Former Russian Volkswagen plant resumes car assembly

The new owner of the Kaluga enterprise, the AGR company, plans to produce about 27 thousand cars here by the end of this year.

The management of the German Volkswagen concern, as well as many other foreign automakers, previously decided to sell the Russian part of the business. The company began looking for buyers back in 2022, and the deal was finally completed last spring. The current owner of the former VW assets in Russia is AGR Automotive Group (OOO AGR).

The plan to resume production at the automobile plant in Kaluga was made last year, as previously stated by Denis Manturov, who previously held the post of Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation. However, those plans were not destined to come true: at the end of last autumn, an order was signed on downtime from December 1, 2023 to February 29, 2024; later, this regime at the plant was extended.

Now the enterprise has returned to the production of cars: this was announced during a government meeting by Vladimir Popov, Deputy Governor of the Kaluga Region. According to him, serial assembly of cars was resumed in August. He also noted that according to the plan, up to 27 thousand cars should roll off the assembly line of this plant by the end of the year.

For now, the new owner continues to keep secret who became the partner of the company «AGR»: there is still no official information about which models exactly began to be assembled at the plant in Kaluga. Let us recall that at the beginning of the summer, the governor of the Kaluga region Vladislav Shapsha said that in January there was a meeting between representatives of AGR Automotive Group and the Chinese company GAC Motor. However, nothing is known about the results of this meeting.

Today, GAC does not produce its cars in the Russian Federation; there has not yet been any official and specific information about the relevant prospects. The current model range of the “celestial” brand on the Russian market consists of three models: the GAC GS3 SUV, the GS8 crossover and the M8 minivan.

As we reported earlier, the production capacity of the Kaluga enterprise is designed to produce up to 225 thousand . cars annually. Previously, three models of brands belonging to the VW concern, once in demand on the Russian market, rolled off this assembly line. We are talking about the Volkswagen Tiguan crossover, as well as the Volkswagen Polo and Skoda Rapid liftbacks.

Judging by the report of the German concern, the amount of the transaction for the sale of Russian assets of VW amounted to 125 million euros. As a result, AGR Automotive Group became the owner of not only the production site in Kaluga, but also Volkswagen Group Rus LLC, Volkswagen Components and Services LLC, Scania Leasing LLC, Scania Finance LLC and Scania Insurance LLC.