(Reuters) – The buyer of German carmaker Volkswagen’s former factory in Russia has found a foreign technology partner for the plant and plans to resume production in the first half of 2024, Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov said on Wednesday.
Manturov, in comments reported by the TASS news agency, did not name the new partner for Art-Finance, which acquired Volkswagen’s Russian assets in May 2023.
After Russian troops invaded Ukraine and the West imposed sanctions, including on the automotive industry, most global carmakers left the Russian market, giving way to Chinese ones.
In November, Reuters reported that furloughed workers at Volkswagen’s former factory in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, were being offered redundancy as the new owners struggled to find a partner to resume output.
(Writing by Filipp Lebedev; Editing by Alexander Marrow and Mark Trevelyan)
