Chinese car manufacturer Chery became the largest foreign company in Russia by revenue in 2023, according to Forbes magazine. The publication released on Tuesday its rankings of the 50 largest businesses operating in the sanctioned country that are at least 50% foreign owned.
Chery is the first ever Chinese company to claim the top spot in the Forbes ranking. The brand increased its sales in Russia by 300% year-on-year to over 590 billion rubles ($6.65 billion). In 2022, the Chinese carmaker was number ten on the Forbes list.
According to the analytics agency Autostat, Chery was the second best-selling brand in Russia last year after the Russian Lada, boasting an 11% share of the market.
Apart from Chery, a number of other Chinese brands, such as Haval, Geely, Changan, Exeed, and Omoda are also present in the Russian market. Carmakers from China replaced European, Japanese, and Korean firms that left Russia following the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict in 2022 and the massive Western sanctions campaign against Moscow that followed.
Previously, EU carmakers topped the Forbes list, with German conglomerate Volkswagen Group coming first in 2022 and France’s Renault in 2020.
In the latest Forbes rankings, tobacco manufacturers JT Group of Japan and Philip Morris International of the US were second and third, respectively, and American multinational food corporation PepsiCo fourth, their positions unchanged since the previous year.
The leader of last year’s rating, French home goods retailer Leroy Merlin, dropped out of the rankings after its parent company, Adeo Group, transferred control of its Russian assets to local management, Forbes noted. Leroy Merlin’s revenue in Russia in 2022 stood at nearly 530 billion rubles (nearly $6 billion).