Russian investor likely to buy Hyundai's St. Petersburg plant - Industry and Trade Ministry

ASTANA. Sept 25 (Interfax) - The St. Petersburg automobile plant belonging to South Korea's Hyundai (Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Rus LLC) will soon be acquired by a Russian investor, Deputy Prime Minister - Head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation Denis Manturov told reporters on the sidelines of the Innoprom Kazakhstan exhibition, citing interest expressed by one specific company.

Hyundai plans to sell its Russian assets with a two-year buyback option. "We have already made all the decisions regarding the acquisition of Hyundai's assets. At least, what was stated directly by the company itself. Therefore, a decision will be made in the near future. The buyer will be a domestic company," he said.

Hyundai's Russian assets, including the plant in St. Petersburg, were of interest to Kaliningrad's Avtotor, which, after ending cooperation with its South Korean partner, as well as with Germany's BMW, is now working with Chinese companies BAIC, Kaiyi and SWM in its home region.

Interfax was informed of Avtotor's interest in the Hyundai plant by a source familiar with discussions of the initiative. The source said that in the summer, Kaliningrad regional leadership sent a letter to Vladimir Putin with a proposal to consider placing Avtotor production at Hyundai's St. Petersburg site. The President then instructed Manturov to study this initiative.

This spring, South Korean media reported that a Kazakh investor could become the buyer of Hyundai's Russian assets, but this information was not officially confirmed.

The Hyundai plant in St. Petersburg began operations in September 2010. The enterprise, with a capacity of more than 200,000 vehicles per year, produced the Hyundai Solaris, Hyundai Creta, Kia Rio and Kia Rio X-Line models through spring 2022.

The SPARK-Interfax analytical system shows that, at the end of 2022, the company saw its revenues decrease 75.6% to 50.3 billion rubles, and posted an 18.8 billion ruble net loss against 11.2 billion rubles the previous year.