Ford Plant in Russia to Increase Production

There’s finally some good news for Russian employees from Ford Motor Company’s Vsevolozshsk assembly plant, as the company announced that it will increase production thanks to government programs to support car sales, wrote Reuters.

After moving to a four-day work week back in September, due to a 50 percent decline in car sales, the plant is going back to normal. This means that one of its units will return to the five day work week from December 11, 2009, while the rest of the plant will join on January 11, 2010.

"With the car scrappage program expected to be introduced in Russia next year, we believe it is necessary to start the realignment of our local production," said the managing director of Ford Russia, Nigel Brackenbury.

Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that the government will pay 50,000 roubles ($1,733) to each car owner who will trade in vehicles over 10 years old, in order to buy a new car built in Russia. This program does not exclude foreign companies like Ford which have factories there. Russia already subsidizes loans on cars under 600,000 roubles. That’s a little more than $20,000, so a lot of Russian-built Ford Focus cars are eligible for this program.

Ford opened its 387,360 square foot Vsevolozhsk Assembly Plant back in 2002 and currently has nearly 2,500 people working there. The site is able to produce 125,000 vehicles every year, of which 100,000 are Ford Focus and 25,000 are Ford Mondeo.