OREANDA-NEWS. Group of companies "Avtotor" will not cut investments in production facilities as part of automotive cluster in Kaliningrad. The deputy director of PR of the Kaliningrad branch of "Avtotor Holding", Sergey Lugovoi, informed the agency "Interfax".

"Information on the reduction of investment of our company in automotive cluster requires some clarification. In the construction of production facilities it will be directed, as it was mentioned earlier, 60 billion Rubles. It is likely that it would be reduced the amount of funds for the construction of non-production sphere. Primarily, this is connected with the decrease of the construction site by 360 hectares”, - said Mr.Lugovoy, who is cited by the agency "Finmarket”.

According to him, the current volume of investment in the construction of residential campus and its infrastructure is not defined. But we already know that the residential area will be designed not for 50 thousand people, as it was planned, but for 30 thousand. "Therefore, the total investment in the Kaliningrad automotive cluster will decrease. In this case, we are talking for several years about the fact that our new production capacity will permit to produce at the enterprises of cluster 250 thousand cars. The working shops will be redeveloped for the production of automotive components”, - said Mr.Lugovoy.

Earlier, senior vice president of "Avtotor Holding", Vitaly Shipov, said that investment in cluster creation of full-profile automobile manufactures may be reduced from 150 billion Rubles to 60 billion Rubles. Plant of production of 100,000 cars was launched in the first quarter of 2016. In the second stage it is presumed the construction of three plants with a production capacity of 50 thousand cars, therewith it will be started the production of two new brands of cars at one of the companies. As a result, automotive cluster will be designed to produce 250,000 cars a year.

In the autumn of 2013 "Avtotor" and Magna presented a project to create a cluster in an area of over 1,200 hectares. In these areas near Kaliningrad it was supposed the construction of five car plants of full cycle until 2020, up to 16 plants for the production of automotive components, as well as objects of transport and logistics infrastructure.

"Avtotor" was founded in 1994; it began the production in 1997. Today the company produces about 30 models of passenger cars under the brands BMW, KIA, Opel, Chevrolet, Hyundai, as well as trucks TATA Daewoo, Hyundai and Ford. The total investment in the development of production was about 500 million Euros.