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March 29, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 4
Ford Sollers to shut down plants in Russia, stop imports
After the restructuring, Ford Sollers will only focus on assembling and selling its Light Com- mercial Vehicle (LCV) model Ford Transit on the Elabrug plant and the sales of the model. Sollers will gain control of the JV with a 51%.
Vedomosti daily reminds that Ford was the first foreign car major that has built a full-cycle car production chain in Russia with the launch of the Ford Focus plant in Vsevolozhsk in 2002. Report- edly, in 2014-2016 Ford Sollers was loss making and could not cope with the market plunge.
After nearly five years of contraction, the sale of
new cars grew for the second year in a row in 2018. In 2017, the new car market grew by 12%, and in 2018 by 13% to 1.8mn vehicles. However, February sales numbers questioned the sustainability of the positive trend on the car market.
In the meantime, some foreign companies managed to sit the market decline out. Russia's largest carmaker Avtovaz and Renault-Nissan- Mitsubishi plan to strike a RUB70bn ($1.1bn) investment deal for 10 years in Russia, the companies said in the end of 2018.
Renault-Nissan is the largest shareholder in Avtovaz, together with Russian state technology agency Rostec. Since autumn 2018 Rostec and Renault Nissan have been seeking to consolidate 100% in Avtovaz. In April Avtovaz completed the second stage of a $1bn recapitalisation by the French car major and Rostec, which brought their joint stake in the company to 83.5%.
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