The car plant in Kaluga began assembling Citroen C5 Aircross cars

The car plant in Kaluga, which had been shut down since April 2022, resumed production of French Stellantis cars: the Automotive Technologies company with little-known owners launched the assembly of the Citroen C5 Aircross. According to customs data, vehicle kits for assembly come from China from the Dongfeng Peugeot-Citroen Automobile plant. The Stellantis concern in February announced that at the end of 2023 it was no longer related to both the joint venture in China with Dongfeng and the plant in Kaluga, control over which it considered lost.

The Automobile Technologies company began serial production of Citroen C5 Aircross cars in Kaluga at the PSMA Rus plant. Production is carried out in SKD mode – in fact, we are talking about assembling cars. The car will go on sale in May this year, its cost will be almost 4.3 million rubles.

Automobile Technologies LLC was registered in March 2023 and belongs to Galina Dolgolenko. The general director of the company is Alexander Dzygovsky, who has an email address with the name avolodin on his SPARK page. Alexey Volodin heads Peugeot Citroen Rus – this information is also indicated on his LinkedIn page. Ms. Dolgolenko and Mr. Dzygovsky did not previously own or lead other companies.

The PSMA Rus plant has been idle since April 2022.

According to SPARK, it is owned by the Dutch PCMA Holding BV, in which Stellantis had 70%, and Mitsubishi had another 30%. According to the Dutch register, PCMA Holding BV is an active company. However, Stellantis said in its 2023 report that it had “lost control” of its Russian subsidiaries at the end of last year and has “no power” over them from that point on. Against this background, Stellantis recorded a loss of €144 million.

“To restart production at the PSMA Rus plant, we found the opportunity to organize the supply of components from China for cars of our root brands,” said Pavel Bezruchenko, director of strategic development of Automotive Technologies, in December 2023. Reuters wrote about the delivery of at least 42 vehicle kits to Automotive Technologies from Dongfeng Motor Group.

According to customs declarations, which Kommersant got acquainted with, the company received a declaration in March for the serial production of Citroen C5 Aircross cars.

A declaration for serial production is issued for long-term supplies of large volumes of products or for the production of products in periodically repeating batches. The address of the assembly plant is the Dongfeng Peugeot-Citroen Automobile (DPCA) plant. This is a 50-50 joint venture between Stellantis and China’s Dongfeng. However, Stellantis’ annual report said the company had lost control of Dongfeng Peugeot-Citroen Automobile and its joint distribution company. In October 2023 Nikkei wrote about Dongfeng Motor Group’s plans to acquire automotive assets from its joint venture with Stellantis amid weak auto sales in China. It was about the sale of DPCA assets, buildings and structures for $234 million. It was said that the joint venture would continue to produce cars under a leasing agreement for a period of ten years.

Sergei Udalov from Avtostat notes that Peugeot-Citroen pursued a “high pricing policy” in Russia until 2022 and the cars had a specific target consumer. According to the AEB, not a single Peugeot-Citroen model was included in the top 25 best-selling models in the Russian Federation. However, the LCVs produced at the plant were in much more active demand: the Peugeot Traveler was in the top 10. Mr. Udalov believes that the brand still has a fairly loyal audience and in the current market, Kaluga-assembled cars will stand out due to the European brand and the availability of a warranty. He calls the price of the Citroen C5 Aircross quite competitive, but expects sales at the end of the year to be about 10 thousand cars. The company itself does not disclose sales plans.

Olga Nikitina