Russia’s biggest automaker reports soaring sales

AvtoVAZ says it sold twice as many cars over January-July as in the same period in 2022

Major Russian automobile producer AvtoVAZ has doubled its sales so far this year, the business daily RBK reported on Wednesday, citing a report by the company.

Between January and July, AvtoVAZ sold 172,996 cars of its top-selling brand LADA, which is twice the amount it sold over the same period in 2022, RBK wrote.

AvtoVAZ’s Granta, the best-selling model from the LADA range in the domestic market, showed a 162.5% jump in sales last month compared to July 2022, the report adds.

The company reported that total manufacturing increased by 59% in the first seven months of this year compared to 2022.

AvtoVAZ is the largest car manufacturer in Russia and Eastern Europe, producing over one million vehicles per year.

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The Russian car industry, which was heavily reliant on foreign investment and equipment, suffered a crisis last year due to the exodus of foreign manufacturers in light of Western sanctions imposed over the Ukraine conflict.

In 2023, however, AvtoVAZ says it is seeing steady growth in demand for domestically produced cars. In June, it launched assembly operations at a plant in St. Petersburg that formerly belonged to the Japanese automaker Nissan.

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