You're reading: Eurocar intends to retain car production at 2012 level in 2013

Private joint-stock company Eurocar (Solomonove, Zakarpattia region), part of Atoll Holding, plans in 2013 to produce around 14,000 cars, which is almost the same as in 2012 (14,556 cars), the head of the company's supervisory board, Oleh Boyarin, has told reporters.

“We initially had the said plans [before the introduction of car imports duties], and there are no preconditions to say that the situation will change globally, so we’re retaining the plans. This amounts to 13% of the capacity of our production facilities,” Boyarin said, adding that today production facilities are used at 12% capacity.

He said that the introduction of a special car imports duty could influence producers and market no earlier than in six months, as importers have stocks of cars at warehouses.

As for the possible increase in the share of Skoda cars made in Ukraine of the Ukrainian car market, he said that Eurcar anticipates that the share of Skoda cars will grow not thanks to the introduction of the duties, but thanks to the start of production of new two models.

“We plan that the share will grow only thanks to the introduction of new models, as the market will form the prices. The major international producers declare rather large level of profits [for example, Toyota], and it means nothing to them to reduce shipments by 10-15% to the Ukrainian market if they want to stay on it,” he said.

As reported, Eurocar on March 1 started the production of a new model, the compact Skoda Rapid sedan. It is planned to produce 5,000 cars in 2013, and in July 2013 the plant will start producing the third generation Skoda Octavia and the upgraded Superb.

Eurocar has been producing cars since December 2001. In late 2011, as part of a project to create full-scale production with a capacity of 100,000 cars per year, the plant launched welding and paint workshops, which allows the plant to reach full-scale car assembly. However, full-scale production has not been launched at the plant due to a difficult situation in the automotive industry.

In 2012, Eurocar increased car production by 25% compared to 2011, to 14,556 cars, while in Ukraine the production of passenger cars fell by 28.6% on 2011, to 69,687.