Alisa has opened a factory in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, where it plans to assembly children’s bicycles and other types of bikes, initially for the Russian market. Because of its geographical location – between Poland and Lithuania and facing Sweden across the Baltic Sea – an expansion into the European Union is envisaged by 2008. Called Yantar after the company’s original brand of children’s bikes, the factory is located in the shipbuilding area of Kaliningrad, drawing on a highly skilled local workforce trained to high standards due to the former military role of the local harbor.
Yantar will be among the first companies to take advantage of special new regulations, which became effective last Jan. 10, allowing the duty-free importation of components for manufacturing in the territory of Kaliningrad, the former Köningsberg. The new regulations also provide special tax concessions, and they apply to companies investing a minimum of about €4.5 million in this special economic region. As indicated extensively in our recent report on the Russian sporting goods market, firms had to invest more before to take advantage of this sort of facilities.
Founded by Oleg Sokhatskyi, who still runs the Moscow-based firm, Yantar was a leader in the market for children’s bicycles before a rush for cheaper products from China. Last year Alisa distributed about 200,000 imported bicycles, and the company already has orders to deliver a similar amount by the end of 2007. Alisa markets other brands such as Top Gear for adult mounting bikes and Tornado and Navigator.
Meanwhile Russia’s leading bicycle manufacturer, Velomotors, plans to open a new 4,500-square-meter assembly plant next May in Krylovskaya, in the Southern region of Krasnodar. In 2004 Velomotors already opened a new factory of 12,000 square meters in the Moscow region, but the new investment is meant to produce an extra one million bicycles each year for distribution only in the South of the country, where the season starts one and half months earlier than in Moscow. There is no competitor in the region. Last year Velomotors produced a total of 1.6 million bicycles, mainly under its own brand, Stels.
