Nissan Motor and its alliance partner Renault will decide soon whether to set up industrial operations in Russia’s far east, the chief executive of both companies said.
“There has been a request from the Russian government to consider CKD [assembly] operations in the far east,” Carlos Ghosn told Prime-Tass at the Geneva show.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
“We haven’t answered it yet. We are analysing it. But we promised [Russian] President [Dmitry] Medvedev we would give him an answer in the coming weeks,” he said.
Mdevedev’s request is part of a broader government program to accelerate development in Russia’s underutilised far east. Most people in the region buy right-hand-drive used cars imported from Japan [which is closer than most Russian car plants in the west].
Thousands of people in the regional capital of Vladivostok took to the streets in protest at the end of 2008 when the government raised tariffs on used foreign cars.
The Renault-Nissan alliance already has three car plants in Russia. Nissan makes vehicles at St Petersburg and Renault has a plant outside Moscow. The two also plan to assemble cars at a facility at Togliatti owned by AvtoVAZ.
