KAMAZ hosted a regular meeting for auto suppliers from various Russian regions. The participants of the conference summed up the results of cooperation for 2019-2021 and discussed plans for 2022-2025.
More than 150 medium and large entrepreneurs took part in the event. Opening the conference, Yury Gerasimov, First Deputy General Director of KAMAZ – Executive Director, thanked the audience for timely delivery of necessary components to KAMAZ. Their efforts helped KAMAZ ship assembled vehicles without failures during two years of the pandemic.
“You helped KAMAZ continue working,” said Yury Gerasimov. “We produce K3, and K4, and K5. This is difficult, both for you and for our production. But the customer awaits all three truck generations from us. All trucks are in demand, sought-after.”
Summing up the preliminary results of the year, the speaker noted that this year’s plan would be surely implemented with good performance. By the end of December, about 1,700 vehicles of the K5 generation will have been assembled.
As for the quality of the supplied products, this issue needs discussion, Gerasimov said. Generally, KAMAZ is ready to continue cooperating with its domestic partners and foreign companies from China and Eastern Europe.
Ravil Ibragimov, Deputy General Director of KAMAZ PTC for Procurement, reported on purchases under Business Plan 2022. In particular, he stressed that, despite the pandemic, the shortage of electronic components, high prices for metal and materials, logistical problems, KAMAZ manages to work as usual, without delays in production.
According to him, the company will be able to increase vehicle production by 10%, with a projected 18% growth next year. Six percent is an increase in the buses delivered this year, and 2022 is expected to see a 2% increase. The delivery of electric buses is planned to be increased by 29% – up to 450 units.
Global engineering trends and new activities of KAMAZ were touched upon in the speech delivered by Andrey Savinkov, Deputy Chief Designer of KAMAZ PTC – Chief Designer of Vehicles.
“KAMAZ is proud to be number one among Russian truck makers. But we cannot rest on our laurels. Being the only Russian strong rival of western truck makers, we have to develop and put out new products not only to follow trends, but also to contribute to the overall development, including yours,” said Andrey Savinkov addressing the suppliers.
The global trends to be followed by KAMAZ include the reduction of carbon footprint and, as a result, the development of electric and driverless vehicles, the use of new energy sources. KAMAZ is eagerly developing these activities. At the same time, it is fine-tuning and upgrading traditional trucks. Thus, already by 2023, the K4 generation vehicles will be out of production. This is, first of all, due to import substitution and transition to localized auto components. The K3 truck production will be reduced to a large extent too.
The latest truck generation is wider and wider, also due to new dump trucks. For instance, KAMAZ is finishing operational tests of KAMAZ-6595 and KAMAZ-65951 trucks. “We’ve developed a range of brand new dump trucks. These are heavy-duty dump trucks with single wheels. They feature a number of imported components and assemblies, but we are already mastering their production. And we hope that it will take us a year to introduce these dump trucks to market,” shared Andrey Savinkov.