Like Mercedes, BMW plans to build a factory in Russia
- Following Mercedes, which is building an assembly plant near Moscow, it is the turn of its competitor BMW to announce that it could build an assembly plant in Russia to produce the best selling models of the brand locally, namely the Series 3 and Series 5 sedans, as well as the X1, X3, X4, X5 and X6 SUVs.
- In 2016, BMW sold 27,500 vehicles in Russia, of which 20,000 were locally produced. This is much less than in 2013, when BMW had sold more than 40,000 vehicles, including 30,000 locally produced. The Bavarian manufacturer is currently using a part of the Russian assembler Avtotor’s factory, located in Kaliningrad.
- BMW shares this factory with other manufacturers, such as Hyundai and Kia, and formerly Chevrolet and Opel. The capacity of the Avtotor plant is 250,000 vehicles per year but BMW has never exceeded 30,000 vehicles per year. However, the German manufacturer prefers to have its own factory, because third-party factory rental remains a fragile and not necessarily flexible system.
- For BMW, the revival of the Russian market observed in 2017 and the constant increase in the market share of premium brands in Russia encourages the manufacturer to set up in the country, with its own resources, like Mercedes, so as to be able to produce almost all of its cars sold in Russia, i.e. 40,000 to 50,000 vehicles per year.
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