VW closes Kosice minifactory

Volkswagen has ended operations of its smallest factory, a mini-production center near the Slovak town of Košice. Located in an industrial park in the town of Haniska, the facility employed 100 people and specialized in preparing vehicles for the Russian market. "We prepared 135,000 vehicles for export to Russia," Volkswagen Slovakia chairman Oliver Grunberg told the daily Pravda. "If these activities aren't necessary for the Russian market, we leased our buildings in Košice." VW's factories in Russia are concentrated around Vladivostok. The way automobile companies got around high import tariffs Russia slapped on their vehicles was to take them apart before shipping and reassemble them again once inside Russia.