The buyer of the Japanese company's enterprise was the S8 Capital Group, which previously became the owner of the local assets of Continental and Cordiant.
The Japanese company Bridgestone officially announced plans to leave the Russian market last fall. Then it became known that the tire manufacturer was looking for a buyer for its local assets, including the Ulyanovsk plant, which was put on hold back in March 2022. The buyer was identified in June of this year.
In the photo: the former Bridgestone plant in Ulyanovsk
It became the S8 Capital Group of Armen Sargsyan, which previously became the owner of a tire plant in Kaluga (before that it belonged to the German company Continental) and enterprises of the Russian holding Cordiant, located in Yaroslavl and Omsk. Now a production site in Ulyanovsk has been added to this cluster; the Bridgestone press service published an official announcement about the sale of Russian assets today.
In addition to the plant, the Japanese tire manufacturer also sold a local product sales company (we are talking about a sales and marketing office in Moscow). The company noted that “the transaction has received all necessary regulatory approvals,” and also explained that “as part of the transaction, approximately 1,000 employees will be transferred to the buyer.” The manufacturer also noted that during the downtime, employees were paid wages and benefits in full.
According to Bridgestone's official statement, the impact of the transfer of Russian assets to the S8 Capital Group «on the consolidated forecast for 2023 will be insignificant.» The parties did not disclose the amount of the transaction. It is known that at the end of 2022, the net loss of the Bridgestone Thayer Manufacturing CIS plant amounted to 11.7 billion rubles, while in 2021 the company reported a net profit of 454 million rubles.
Let us remind you that Bridgestone products have been present on the Russian market since 1998, and the tire production plant in Ulyanovsk began operating at the end of 2016. The production capacity of this plant is designed to produce 2.4 million tires per year (there is a prospect of expansion to 4.2 million units). It was previously reported that the share of revenue from the Russian business in the Bridgestone group was less than 2%.
At the Ulyanovsk tire plant The production of automobile tires with standard sizes ranging from 13 to 19 inches has been launched. These tires are intended for passenger cars, crossovers and SUVs, as well as for supply to automakers for the initial equipment of vehicles rolling off production lines. Winter tires were also supplied to Finland, Sweden and Norway.
The total production capacity of the tire factories of the S8 Capital Group, including the Bridgestone S8 plant, will be more than 15 million tires per year (4 million can be produced by the former Continental enterprise, another 9 million are ready to be produced by Cordiant factories). As a result, S8 is in second place in the Russian Federation after Tatneft, which in March 2023 acquired the plant of the Finnish tire manufacturer Nokian Tires in the Leningrad region. The company's total production capacity is designed to produce 17.5 million tires per year.
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