Mercedes will sell its plant in the Moscow region to the dealer Avtodom
Source：Vedomosti
From：Taiwan Trade Center, Moscow
Update Time：2022/11/14
Mercedes-Benz Manufacturing Rus (a subsidiary of the German Mercedes-Benz AG) will sell its Mercedes passenger car manufacturing plant in the Moscow region to the Avtodom dealer holding. Three sources familiar with the negotiations told Vedomosti about this. According to one of them, the deal between the parties will be announced on October 26.
Another interlocutor admits that an option may be provided as part of the transaction, under which Mercedes-Benz AG will be able to return to ownership of the plant within a certain time. According to this scheme, Renault withdrew from the capital of AvtoVAZ this year, transferring its 67.7% of the enterprise to the Federal State Unitary Enterprise NAMI subordinate to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
There is an option for asset repurchase from Japanese Nissan, which, as part of its withdrawal from Russia, will sell its plant in St. Petersburg to the same US for 1 euro.
One of the interlocutors of Vedomosti says that the contract for the sale of the plant was signed last week. "Avilon [car dealer] was also a serious candidate," he notes. Vedomosti sent questions to Avilon, the Russian office of Mercedes–Benz and the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia.
Mercedes launched a plant located in the Esipovo Industrial Park (Solnechnogorsk district of Moscow region) on April 3, 2019. The opening was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chairman of the Board of Daimler Dieter Zetsche. The construction of the production site began two years earlier as part of a special investment contract signed by the German company. The declared volume of investments amounted to at least 15 billion rubles. The plant is designed to produce 25,000-30,000 premium foreign cars per year. Mercedes E-class became the first model to enter the assembly line in the Moscow region.
The German company stopped the production of cars in the Moscow region and imports to Russia at the very beginning of March 2022 against the background of Ringing in Ukraine. Sales of Mercedes passenger cars and light commercial vehicles in Russia in 2021 increased by 11% to 43,011 cars, according to data from the Association of European Businesses.
Mercedes in Russia
Mercedes-Benz Manufacturing Rus (MBMR) is a 100% subsidiary of the German Mercedes–Benz AG, follows from the data of SPARK-Interfax. The corresponding change was made in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities only on September 15, 2022. Before that, the German company owned 80% of MBMR, the remaining 20% were owned by Daimler Kamaz Rus (joint venture Daimler and Kamaz), which before the start of its production produced Mercedes trucks in Naberezhnye Chelny. In 2021, MBMR earned 265.4 million rubles. net profit with revenue of 6.88 billion rubles. The net assets of the company at the end of the year were estimated at 1.94 billion rubles, the staff – 988 people.
In January – September 2022, 9093 cars of this brand were sold, which is 3.7 times less than in the same period last year.
Kommersant was the first to report Mercedes' desire to sell the plant in the Moscow region at the end of August. Then a number of interlocutors of the publication pointed to the possibility of buying the company "Avtodom". A month earlier it was reported that Mercedes-Benz Rus also wants to sell the property of its distributor in Russia – a building in the village of Veshki near Moscow, where office space and service are located.
Managing Partner of NF Group (formerly Knight Frank Russia) Alexey Novikov estimates the cost of the plant's land and buildings, excluding business, within 4 billion rubles. He draws attention to the fact that this is the most modern automobile enterprise with technological equipment, located closer than other similar facilities to Moscow – the largest sales market.
The cost of the object, excluding equipment and technologies, is at least 7.5 billion rubles, according to the senior director of the warehouse and industrial real estate department CORE.XP Anton Alyabyev.
It is difficult to evaluate the asset, since much will depend on what conditions will be prescribed in the contract between the parties, says auto expert Vladimir Bespalov. According to him, Avtodom needs to look for an industrial partner, since it is unlikely that the dealer will be able to produce a Mercedes model range. "Here the eye is primarily focused on China, although theoretically there are other countries, such as India," Bespalov added.
Andrey Olkhovsky, General Director of Avtodom, spoke at the end of 2021 about the company's intentions to develop not only in car sales. Among the nearest projects, the top manager called the organization of industrial assembly of machines.
Source: https://www.vedomosti.ru/business/articles/2022/10/26/947346-mercedes-prodast-svoi-zavod-dileru-avtodom?utm_campaign=newspaper_26_10_2022&utm_medium=email&utm_source=vedomosti