In 2023, AvtoVAZ took over a plant once operated by Nissan in St. Petersburg, and the facility subsequently returned to state control. This transition was confirmed by Dmitry Kostromin, the company executive responsible for sales and marketing, who noted that the plant, after 2023, became an independent factory unit under state oversight.
The ownership shift placed the facility back with NAMI, the state automotive research institute aligned with the Ministry of Industry and Trade. NAMI had acquired the plant from Nissan in 2022 at a nominal price and secured a six-year buyback option as part of the transaction.
Nissan’s St. Petersburg factory opened in June 2009 and produced vehicles such as the X-Trail, Murano, Qashqai, and Terrano. At that time, the site possessed a production capacity of about 100,000 vehicles annually. The asset had been sold to a foreign entity in the autumn of 2022.
During the summer of 2023, the former Nissan facility began producing the Lada X-Cross 5, a vehicle built on the Chinese FAW Bestune T77 platform but wearing a different nameplate. By December, information about the Lada X-Cross 5 had vanished from AvtoVAZ’s official site, prompting uncertainty about the project’s future.
Subsequent statements from an AvtoVAZ insider indicated that the assembly of these crossovers would not continue, following FAW’s decision to end cooperation with AvtoVAZ. Of the 170 crossovers assembled, 50 were sold in Moscow, 120 were moved to Tolyatti, and 60 units were equipped with winter tires to serve as official transport for the company’s management team.
Earlier reports also noted that the site formerly associated with Hyundai had been renamed AGR Automobile Plant, marking another chapter in the site’s evolving ownership and production role within Russia’s automotive landscape.