SEAT’s Russian Exit Not Slowing Spain Plant’s Output

MADRID – Spanish automaker SEAT is restoring production to pre-recession levels at its Martorell plant, but none of its 2015 output will reach Russia, as the Volkswagen subsidiary is abandoning that market for the fourth time since 1999.

The plant near Barcelona will finish 2014 with about 441,000 builds, up 13% from the previous year, and a 3.4% increase to 456,000 units is targeted for 2015, SEAT works council president Matias Camero tells the EFE news agency.

The 2015 goal would be slightly higher than the 2002 record of 455,677 assemblies, but roughly 20% below the facility’s annual production capacity of 550,000 units.

Martorell builds SEAT Leon, Altea and Ibiza models as well as the Audi Q3 CUV, but VW has tapped its Skoda subsidiary’s Czech Republic plant to build a still-unnamed CUV for SEAT as well as a Skoda version of the vehicle.

There is a strong competition among VW Group assembly plants in Europe not only for new models but also for existing models in limited production.

Martorell, for example, won the Q3 program over a Brussels factory in 2011. But plans also call for 64,220 SEAT vehicles to be built outside Spain in 2015: the Alhambra (Palmela, Portugal), Toledo (Mladá Boleslav, Slovakia) and Mii (Bratislava, Slovakia).

SEAT union officials hope to make up the capacity shortfall at Martorell by landing both a smaller version of the CUV awarded to the Czech Republic plant and the new Audi A1 currently being assembled in Brussels.

Martorell also picked up some extra work when SEAT announced production of the Altea range would end in July 2015 instead of April as originally scheduled. With yearly output at 25,000 units, the extension means about 6,000 more Alteas will be built there next year.

SEAT, meanwhile, is cutting its losses in the moribund Russian market, already dismantling its distribution network ahead of ending sales in the country at the beginning of 2015, the Kommersant financial newspaper reports. The automaker will continue providing technical services to its Russian customers.

SEAT entered the Russian market in 1996 but left three years later after selling only 600 units. Two more attempts failed before the Spanish brand returned to Russia in 2012, this time as part of VW Group Rus.

After delivering 3,400 Ibiza, Leon and Alhambra models in 2013, SEAT sold only 1,300 units in Russia during the first nine months of 2014, down 57% from a year earlier.

Kommersant reports some analysts believe the next Western automaker to exit the Russian market could be Italy’s Fiat, which has seen sales fall 3% in the first 10 months of 2014 to 6,100 units.