The first cars have rolled off the assembly lines of the AvtoZAZ‑Daewoo joint venture and have been sold

Just four months after announcing its plans to assemble Mercedes‑Benz automobiles in Ukraine, representatives of Avtokapital, the Ukrainian company behind the project, say the first cars have rolled off the assembly lines of the AvtoZAZ‑Daewoo joint venture and have been sold. Ihor Yemchuk, director of Avtokapital’s sales department for light and heavy automobiles, said more than a dozen Mercedes have already been assembled at a plant owned by Zaporizhia‑based AvtoZAZ‑Daewoo in Ilichevsk, Odessa oblast. Avtokapital is Daimler Chrysler’s exclusive representative for Mercedes automobiles in Ukraine. It is part of the Ukravto holding, which operates several Mercedes dealerships in Ukraine, including Kyiv’s Auto House Ukraine, Odessa Auto and Donetsk Auto. Earlier this year, the group purchased a controlling stake in Zaporizhya‑based carmaker AvtoZAZ in a privatization tender, giving it a 51 percent stake in the AvtoZAZ‑Daewoo joint venture. Also this year, the group helped broker the agreement between AvtoZAZ‑Daewoo and Daimler Chrysler that cleared the way for the assembly of Mercedes E‑class and M‑class cars in Ukraine. The Ukravto group and Daimler Chrysler negotiated the deal for almost a year before announcing the decision to assemble the cars during a presidential visit to Zaporizhya on March 21.