The Volkswagen Group will close one of its two factories in Russia, a union has said, with the German company blaming a lack of production due to import sanctions.
Citing an announcement to staff made on Tuesday, the Workers' Association trade union said the Nizhny Novgorod factory will close due to a "lack of EU-produced parts, critically important components from Ukraine and lack of domestically made equivalents”, Automotive News Europe reports.
The European Union imposed sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.
Around 200 staff will be affected by the closure, but the bulk of these have already taken voluntary pay-offs, which included medical insurance and a claimed six months' salary.
The statement added that “disruption of logistics chains and inability to predict the terms and conditions of resumption of work" were other issues noted by Volkswagen, which suspended work at both its Russian plants in March amid the sanctions. The other factory is in Kaluga.
Speaking to Automotive News Europe, Volkswagen confirmed that it had closed its Nizhny Novgorod office on 5 July, due to a "high level of uncertainty and the inability to predict the potential resumption of production”, with 60 office staff affected. It declined to comment further on the decision.
Although VW doesn’t own the factory, it has a contractual agreement with commercial vehicle manufacturer Gaz Group, for several of its models to be assembled there, including the VW Taos and three Skoda models: the Kodiaq, Karoq and Octavia.
No news has yet been released on the future of the Kaluga plant, which employs around 4200 people. Before work was suspended, the Volkswagen Polo, Volkswagen Tiguan and Skoda Rapid were built by Gaz under licence, as well as the Audi Q7 and Audi Q8. Petrol engines for an array of models are also manufactured there.
At the time of the closures, Volkswagen said that it “takes its responsibility for the affected employees in Russia very seriously”.
As well as Volkswagen, Aston Martin, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Honda and Jaguar Land Rover are among the firms to have halted sales in Russia.
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GasMit, VW were one of the first formally start to pull out and started winding down on March 3rd. Want to have a rant look at Renault which were one of the last and only did so because of pressure, Zelensky in particular piled on the pressure on the French company saying they are supporting Putins war machine.
xxxx, you're quite right that there's other car makers out there that don't give a xxxx about morals, customers or people being killed in the quest to make money. Most examples of pretending to care by these ruthless corporations are merely virtue signalling.
I targeted VW because they are very popular in the UK despite making very expensive cars with xxxx reliability, and for all the xxxx things they've done in recent times.
Oh, and for being the subject of this item, hence the relevance.
But as I said VAG were either the first or earliest to start closing their factories down and handing over ownership. Renault without a doubt were the slowest, hard to believe Renault cars are fairly popular over here too.
The Volkswagen Group will close one of its two factories in Russia, a union has said, with the German company blaming a lack of production due to import sanctions.
So nothing to do with doing the right thing regarding Russia atrocities relating to their unprovoked invasion of Ukraine?
Along with Dieselgate and VW's arrogant treatment of customers from some countries, as well as declining reliability standards and rocketing prices, I really don't understand why people still buy VW cars?
If only we'd had the same level of phoney-indignation back in 2003... bunch of bloody hypocrites.