The authorities of the Kaliningrad region believe that the construction of a BMW plant in Hungary will not affect plans of the manufacturer to launch production in Russia, a source in the regional administration told Interfax news agency on Thursday.
“The construction of the new BMW plant in Hungary will not stop the Kaliningrad project, we understand that the Hungarian plant will work exclusively for markets in Europe and other countries where the demand for premium segment cars is growing,” the source said.
However, he has not specified what stage the negotiations have entered about the BMW plant construction in the Kaliningrad region. Earlier, BMW announced a project to build a plant in Hungarian Debrecen, in which the manufacturer is going to invest about 1 billion euros. It is assumed that the plant will annually produce up to 150,000 cars.
In April of this year, Russian Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov informed that there were plans to sign investment contracts by the end of this year for the construction of a BMW plant in the city of Kaliningrad and a Hyundai engine plant in St. Petersburg.
Later in 2017, the Russian division of BMW — BMW Rusland Trading Ltd — established in Kaliningrad its subsidiary, BMW Rusland Automotive. That company said that opening the subsidiary was a planned step in the development of its production in Russia.
