Growing Automotive Industry In Azerbaijan Lures European Car Giant

Azerbaijan is expanding its automobile industry by bringing one more European automobile brand to local production. Ganja Automobile Plant, a local manufacturer of trucks and buses with its headquarters in Azerbaijan’s second largest city, Ganja, and the Czech Koprivnice automotive maker agreed to launch the production of various models of the Czech brand Tatra in Azerbaijan beginning next year.

A cooperation agreement between the two sides was signed on December 18, according to the Azerbaijani Embassy to Czech Republic and reported by Trend news agency.

Tatra will be the second European truck brand to be manufactured at the Ganja facility, alongside MAZ lorries which belong to Belarus’ Belavtomaz automotive company. Azerbaijan will be the second country in the Caspian region to produce Tatra vehicles. Russia has been assembling Tatra trucks since August of this year.

Koprivnice has a 116-year history and does business with Israel, the Gulf states, Australia, Europe and countries within the Commonwealth of Independent States territory. The company’s Tatra line includes heavy-duty off-road vehicles and trucks for combined on/off road transportation. Models include the Tatra Phoenix and Tatra Terrn°1 vehicles, as well as military use vehicles like Tatra Force and Tatra Tactic heavy-duty cars.

Tatra’s entrance into the Azerbaijani auto market means it will be able to leverage the country’s top-of-the-line facilities at the Ganja Automobile Plant, which was founded in 1986 during the Soviet era. The plant had an estimated annual production capacity of 30,000 cars per year. After the collapse of the USSR in December 1991, the plant fell into disrepair, but came back online by 2004, when it rolled out the commercial OKA passenger car, produced by Russia’s VAZ automotive company.

Today the plant produces MAZ trucks and tractors as well six models of Russian UAZ off-roaders. The overall production volume at the plant is 3,000 vehicles per year.

The Ganja plant is one of three automobile production facilities in Azerbaijan, which is also home to the Nakhchivan Automobile Plant in the southwest and the Neftchala Automobile Plant located along the Caspian shoreline, just south of Baku.

The Nakhchivan facility opened in 2010 and assembles eight models of Lifan passenger cars designed by China’s Lifan Group, which provides all the necessary spare parts for cars to the plant so they may be assembled in Azerbaijan under the direct supervision of Chinese automotive specialists.

The Neftchala Automotive Plant produces four brands of cars, mostly Iranian: Dena, Runna, Soren, and Samand all belong to Iran’s Khodro Company. All vehicles are in line with Euro-5 gasoline standards, an obligatory environmental standard in Azerbaijan that regulates the content of harmful substances in exhaust gases.