Industrial Investments Group from Russia is relaunching the local production of Volvo

The new owner of the former Swedish Volvo AB plant in Russia has restarted production after a nearly two-year hiatus, intending to produce 2,000 trucks in 2024, Reuters reports.

In February 2022, Volvo suspended all its sales, service and production operations in Russia, and in October 2022 the company warned investors that it may have to resort to further write-downs on its Russian assets. In 2021, the Russian market generated about 3% of truck maker Volvo's 372 billion Swedish kroner ($36.18 billion) in sales.

The Swedish company, whose factory has an annual capacity of 15,000 trucks, was one of the Western automakers to suspend production and eventually exit the Russian market in response to the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Since then, Chinese car manufacturers have increased their market share in Russia to almost 50%, according to data obtained by Reuters.

In September, Volvo's assets in Russia were transferred to Industrial Investments Group and renamed Automobile Motor Company (AMO). The details of the transaction were not made public. In 2023, 50 trucks will be produced at AMO, and in the future the range of products will be expanded, as informed by the new owner. Industrial Investments announced that it produces a large-capacity truck under the "Next" brand, but did not provide details.

Andrei Alexandrov, the executive director of Industrial Investments Group, announced that the company is discussing with a foreign partner, but did not reveal his identity.

This month, a joint investigation by the independent media outlets Verstka and Buro, with contributions from the Belarusian hacker collective Cyber Partisans, showed that Russia imported at least 1,000 luxury cars worth a total of 93 million euros through Belarus, violating EU sanctions since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, according to novayagazeta.eu.

The team behind the investigation cited customs declarations confirming the delivery of approximately 1,000 cars from Belarus to Russia. Most were expensive new models from Germany, the US, the UK and Italy, and included brands such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Lamborghini and Volvo. Currently, there are 30 companies supplying premium cars from Belarus to Russia. Some have connections with the entourage of the Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, according to the cited source.

In October, journalists from Yle, the Finnish Broadcasting Company, revealed that Finland had become a transit route for the export of luxury cars to Russia, using tracking devices to track the cars after they crossed the border.