St. Petersburg plant GM will stop the conveyor because of falling demand – RBC

St. Petersburg plant GM will stop the conveyor because of falling demand – RBC

The assembly of Opel cars on an assembly line factory” Arsenal “company General Motors

Photo: TASS

Petersburg factory General Motors, works with regular interruptions in the past year, again to stop the pipeline – due to a fall in demand and the collapse of the Russian automotive market, the company will suspend operation for almost two months, from March 23 May 15th. About this newspaper “Kommersant” was told in the press service of the plant. Employees of the Russian company will receive payments for the simple.

Large-scale outages in St. Petersburg plant were last year – in August and September, the company worked only four days a month in October – eight days. Total in total from the last days of October until the end of the Christmas holidays GM plant worked for about two weeks.

The respondents “b” dealers and experts believe that the problems of GM – a low localization of production, due to which prices rise cars, and require updating the model number.

In January, GM raised the price of Opel and Chevrolet in Russia by 15%. Prior to this, the carmaker to adjust prices for Russia in December, while Opel rose by 4-14%. At the end of last year due to a sharp drop in the Russian currency almost all manufacturers have adjusted the prices of their cars. In addition, the weakening ruble provoked high demand in the automotive market, as a result stocks dealers almost completely exhausted by the end of 2014.

Located in St. Petersburg GM plant was opened in 2008, its estimated capacity was 98 thousand. vehicles per year by 2015, the company planned to increase capacity to 230 thousand cars a year.. The number of employees with the office staff was about 2 thousand. Man, in September the company started reducing staff.

In October, General Motors recognized a loss of $ 194 million impairment of production assets and intangible assets of the business in Russia. In its quarterly report, the company reported that retail sales of GM cars in Russia in the first nine months of 2014 amounted to 138 thousand. Units (27% less than the same period of 2013 – 189 thousand.). In the third quarter it sold only 39 thousand. Cars (-43%).

GM assembles cars Captiva, Cruze, Antara, Astra in St. Petersburg, the company also plans to start production of Chevrolet Tahoe and Cadillac Escalade. In Togliatti together with AvtoVAZ company collects Chevrolet Niva, Nizhny Novgorod – Aveo (sedan and hatchback), the Kaliningrad “Avtotor” – 17 different models of Opel, Chevrolet and Cadillac.

In 2014, according to the Association European business, GM sales in Russia fell by 26.4% – up to 257.6 thousand. cars, and market share declined by 1.7 percentage points – to 7.6%.