LLC Volkswagen Group Rus
Kaluga Plant

Plant

The plant of LLC Volkswagen Group Rus is located in the Grabtsevo tech park in the city of Kaluga, 170 kilometers to the south-west of Moscow. The total area of the plant is 2,100,000 square meters. The plant has all the facilities required for production, including a body shop, a paint shop and an assembly unit, as well as its own railway sidings. In addition, Volkswagen and ŠKODA models are produced at Nizhny Novgorod under a contract with GAZ, a company of the Basic Element Group. An engine production unit is located at Kaluga. The plant produces 1.6-litre EA211 gasoline engine. The engines are to be used for the Volkswagen Polo and the ŠKODA Rapid produced in Kaluga, as well as for the ŠKODA Octavia, ŠKODA Karoq and Volkswagen Taos, built jointly with GAZ in Nizhny Novgorod.

Production

Currently, the Volkswagen Tiguan and Polo as well as the ŠKODA Rapid are manufactured in Kaluga. In addition, the Audi Q7 and Q8 models are produced on a Semi-Knocked Down basis (SKD) at the Kaluga plant. The maximum capacity of engine production is 150,000 engines per year.

Management

Jiří Černý is appointed Member of the Volkswagen Group Rus Executive Management with Functional responsibility Production & Logistics effective August 1, 2021. Jiří Černý has been working for Volkswagen Group for more than seven years and, besides that, held the position of Vice President of the Czech Automotive Industry Association. He graduated from the Czech Technical University in Prague and began his career in the automotive industry in 1986 at the LIAZ TRUCKS plant, where he became Production Manager. From 1992 to 2013, Jiří Černý held various managing positions at companies such as Johnson Controls Automotive and Toyota Peugeot Citroen Automobile, and in 2014 he became Managing Director of the ŠKODA Auto factory in Kvasiny, Czech Republic. Since 2019, Jiří Černý has been Senior Director of SAIC Volkswagen Automotive, a joint venture based in Ningbo, China.

Environment

The activities of Volkswagen Group Rus plant in Kaluga are focused on the requirements of the Zero Impact Factory environmental strategy, the part of Volkswagen Group's comprehensive Go to Zero initiative aimed at radically reducing the negative impact on the environment. Zero Impact Factory includes three important steps to reduce the environmental impact of a production site's activities: avoiding activities that may negatively affect the environment, reducing already existing impacts (e. g. by switching to clean energy sources or recycling materials), and compensating for unavoidable negative impacts.

Investment

Volkswagen has invested more than €1 billion in the Kaluga plant. In total, the Volkswagen Group invested 2,06 billion euro in Russia between 2006 and 2021.

History

On April 20, 2006, the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft approved the plans of the Board of Management to significantly intensify the Group's activities in Russia. LLC Volkswagen Rus was founded on May 18, 2006. On May 29, the company signed agreements concerning the establishment of the plant at Kaluga. The foundation stone for the plant was officially laid on November 28, 2006, and one year later the first vehicles left the assembly line. Full manufacture at the plant started on October 20, 2009. On June 14, 2011 Volkswagen and the GAZ Group, part of the ‘Basic Element Group’, signed an agreement to assemble Volkswagen and ŠKODA models under contract at the GAZ plant in Nizhny Novgorod. In September 2015, Volkswagen Group inaugurated its own engine plant in Kaluga. In February 2016, the 1 millionth vehicle rolled off the production line in Kaluga. In November 2016 Kaluga launched the production of new Tiguan and opened new body shop. In November 2018, the 500 000^th Volkswagen Polo was produced in Kaluga. In 2018-2019 the plant received Transformer of the Year award for the best performance indicators among Volkswagen plants in the world two times in a row. In December 2019, production of new ŠKODA Rapid was launched. In April 2020 and December 2020, despite the pandemic, production of new-gen Volkswagen Polo and new Volkswagen Tiguan started respectively. In May 2021, 700,000^th 1.6 MPI engine of EA211 series since the launch of engine production was produced. Later in June Volkswagen Group Rus signed a memorandum of intent with Kaluga Region to produce the 1.4 TSI engine at the plant in Kaluga from 2024.