Japan's Fuji Heavy Industries may start a semi-knock down production of Subaru cars in Russia in 2013-2014 to produce at least 30,000 vehicles a year, Kommersant business daily said on Thursday, quoting Russian subsidiary Subaru Motors General Director Kazushi Yoshida as saying.
Yoshida told the paper the company might cooperate with Russian car-making companies or start contract vehicle assembly. Subaru Motors is in talks with the Avtotor car plant in Russia’s westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad and with Sberbank Capital, an investment division of the country's top bank Sberbank, for possible vehicle production at the GAZ autoworks in Nizhny Novgorod in the Volga region.
However, Subaru Motors may run into difficulties in Russia, which prefers industrial car assembly with reliance on domestic producers, the paper said.
The Russian subsidiary of Subaru Motors was unavailable for comment to RIA Novosti.
Under the new regime introduced in Russia in spring, car producers setting up industrial assembly in Russia will have to produce at least 300,000 vehicles a year for several years after starting up, while companies which already assemble vehicles at their plants in Russia will have to increase their output to 350,000 a year. The new terms also include a requirement that semi knock-down car production should not exceed 5 percent of total car output.
"Car makers planning to produce vehicles by the semi-knock down method without major reliance on local producers of cars and auto parts are unlikely to expect any benefits from the government," Alexei Rakhmanov, head of the car industry department at Russia's Ministry of Industry and Trade, told Kommersant.
