Former Hyundai plant in St. Petersburg renamed AGR Automobile Plant

The former plant of South Korean Hyundai Motor Company in St. Petersburg, now owned by Russian auto holding AGR Automotive Group, has changed its name to the AGR Automobile Plant (Avtozavod AGR LLC), the Unified State Register of Legal Entities shows, said Interfax.

The general director of Avtozavod AGR LLC is Alexey Kalitsev, who was appointed general director of the AGR holding in January 2024. He has been a senior manager at Hyundai's Russian representative office, Hyundai Motor CIS LLC, since 2010, and was responsible for the development strategies for the Hyundai and Genesis brands in Russia. He served as managing director of Hyundai's Russian subsidiary from 2017 onward. Kalitsev is also the current chairman of the automakers committee of the Association of European Businesses (AEB), and a member of the board of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP).

As reported, in January 2024, the parent company of the AGR auto holding, Art-Finance LLC, closed a deal to acquire 100% of the shares of the former Russian production subsidiary of Hyundai. The company now combines St. Petersburg production sites in Kamenka (formerly produced Hyundai and Kia models) and Shushary (former GM plant).

Art-Finance LLC, headed by the former president of the Avilon dealer holding, Andrei Pavlovich, was registered in Moscow in February last year. In May, it purchased the assets of the Russian representative office of Volkswagen, including its car plant in Kaluga. It became known that Hyundai's Russian assets would also be sold to Art-Finance by the end of 2023.

AGR did not disclose the terms of its deal with Hyundai. South Korea's newspaper The Chosun Ilbo said that the transaction price was approved at a symbolic level of 140,000 won, or approximately 10,000 rubles. Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov said in early February that mass production of cars at the former Hyundai plant in St. Petersburg could begin in Q2 2024.

AGR LLC (formerly Volkswagen Group Rus LLC) was the official importer and manufacturer of Volkswagen Group cars from 2003 to 2023. The company changed its name in June 2023, which was the first step in the transformation and restart of the business after the transfer of VW's Russian assets to Art-Finance.

The Hyundai automobile plant in St. Petersburg started up in 2010. Production was suspended in March 2022 due to difficulties with supplies of components. Until the spring of 2022, the enterprise, with a capacity of more than 200,000 cars per year, produced the Hyundai Solaris, Hyundai Creta, Kia Rio and Kia Rio X-Line models. The company's revenue decreased 75.6% in 2022 to 50.3 billion rubles, with an 18.8 billion ruble net loss against 11.2 billion rubles of net profit the previous year.

We remind, sales of new passenger cars in Russia in 2023 increased 69% YoY on last year's low base to 1.06 million units, Interfax reported, citing data from JSC Passport Industrial Consulting, which is a joint venture of the agency and the JSC Electronic Passport manufacturer's certificate of origin operator. The statistics include data for sales of car brands on the official market as well as parallel imports, which made up nearly 15% of the market for the entirety of last year.

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Bashkir Soda Company JSC (BSC, Sterlitamak) has started producing six grades of reduced-fire hazard PVC plastics, said Interfax.

"In accordance with the new Eurasian Economic Union technical regulation "On limiting the use of hazardous substances in electrical and radio electronics products," these newly-developed brands of plastic compounds have been created using safe components. They are distinguished not only by their reduced fire hazard, but also by environmental friendliness. When working with the products, less smoke and hydrogen chloride are emitted," the report says.

The company's own developments are also used in the production of new mass-produced brands. Thus, the product formulation includes metal-containing lubricants.

Currently, the company mass-produces more than 20 types of PVC plastic compounds used in the production of protective shells, insulation and internal filling of cables and wires for operation in temperatures ranging from -40 to +70 degrees Celsius.

The Bashkir Soda Company is the largest producer of soda ash and baking soda in Russia, and one of the country's leaders in the production of PVC, caustic soda and hydrochloric acid. It is part of the JSC Ruschem group of companies (formerly Russian Hydrogen).

Ruschem also combines Berezniki Soda Plant JSC and Donbiotech JSC, as well as a number of enterprises in the South of Russia. Among the industries which use Ruschem products are glass, oil refining, metallurgy, pulp and paper, paint and varnish, tires, agriculture, aviation and others.

We remind, Russian energy company Novatek resumed gas condensate processing at its Ust-Luga complex on Feb. 11, two industry sources said on Wednesday, after the site was damaged last month by a suspected Ukrainian drone attack. The complex processed about 18,000 metric tons of gas condensate over Feb. 11-12, the sources said. Novatek did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

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Novatek-LNG Fuel Kashira LLC has almost completed construction of a mini liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in the Kashira special economic zone in Moscow Region, as per Interfax.

Inspectors have found that the facility is "99%" completed, with experts "finalizing commissioning work on process equipment and engineering systems," Glavgosstroynadzor said.

Construction of the 3,000-square-meter facility began in January 2023 and was scheduled for completion at the end of 2023.

The CEO of Russian LNG producer Novatek , Leonid Mikhelson and Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov signed an investment agreement on the project at the 2022 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. It calls for building a plant with capacity to produce 14,000 tonnes of fuel per year at a cost of about 2.6 billion rubles.

We remind, Russian energy company Novatek resumed gas condensate processing at its Ust-Luga complex on Feb. 11, two industry sources said on Wednesday, after the site was damaged last month by a suspected Ukrainian drone attack. The complex processed about 18,000 metric tons of gas condensate over Feb. 11-12, the sources said. Novatek did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

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Russian energy company Novatek resumed gas condensate processing at its Ust-Luga complex on Feb. 11, two industry sources said on Wednesday, after the site was damaged last month by a suspected Ukrainian drone attack, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The complex processed about 18,000 metric tons of gas condensate over Feb. 11-12, the sources said. Novatek did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Novatek was forced to suspend some operations at Ust-Luga, a huge Baltic Sea fuel export terminal and processing complex, due to a fire on Jan. 21 started by what Ukrainian media said was a drone attack.

On Jan. 24, the company resumed fuel loadings at the Ust-Luga terminal, but exported fuel produced before the fire and held in storage tanks as well as gas condensate.

The Ust-Luga complex, launched in 2013, processes gas condensate into light and heavy naphtha, jet fuel, ship fuel component (fuel oil) and gasoil, and enables the company to ship oil products as well as gas condensate to international markets.

Novatek produces mostly naphtha for Asia, including China, Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysia, as well as jet fuel with delivery to Istanbul for Turkish Airlines THYAO.IS. In 2023, the Ust-Luga complex processed 7 million metric tons of gas condensate, according to Novatek data.

We remind, the tanker Luggati is being loaded at Novatek's NVTK.MM terminal at the Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga, where the company's fuel-producing complex was damaged by fire in January, according to industry sources and LSEG data. The tanker is designed for loading dirty oil products and, presumably, can take on fuel oil from the complex’s storage tanks, the sources added.

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North American chemical rail traffic rose 3.9% year on year to 47,576 railcar loadings for the week ended 10 February, as increases in the US and Mexico more than offset a decline in Canada, according to Association of American Railroads.

Chemical railcar loadings are a coincident volume indicator for the industry, which had a rough start to the new year, with weak demand in a number of sectors.

For the first six weeks of 2024 ended 10 February, North American chemical railcar loadings rose 2.8% to 269,296, with US loadings up 3.4% to 185,247.

In the US, chemical railcar loadings represent about 20% of chemical transportation by tonnage, with trucks, barges and pipelines carrying the rest. In Canada, chemical producers rely on rail to ship more than 70% of their products, with some exclusively using rail.

We remind, North American chemical rail traffic fell by 0.2% year on year to 44,201 railcar loadings for the week ended 27 January – marking a second consecutive decline. The US and Canada recorded declines while loadings in Mexico rose.

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