Automotive industry in Belarus

Since that times Belarus specializes on production of own designed superheavy, heavy and middle trucks mainly plus post-Soviet developed buses, trolleybuses and trams.

The Quality Management System applied in research and development, fabrication, erection and after-sale service of the equipment complies with international ISO 9000 standards.

Minsk Automobile Plant or MAZ is a state-run automotive manufacturer association in Belarus, one of the largest in Eastern Europe.

After the Soviet Union dissolved, MAZ production was reduced substantially, as has happened with many enterprises in the ultra-industrialized Belarus, oriented on the needs of a very big country.

Among other recent products, MAZ city buses (see pictures below) are operating throughout Belarus, as well as in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Estonia.

[4] In Serbia, working in cooperation with a local-based company BIK (Bus industries Kragujevac), a production of gas-powered buses named BIK-203 has been agreed, which are based on the platform of MAZ-203 model.

Production of truck cabs involves huge, expensive tools, making this kind of recycling an existing design attractive.

While production of tractors for international trade with 4x2 and 6x4 chassis layouts was a stated goal, development of exhaust gas regulations within the EU turned this into illusion.

Production of the Belarusian-German company demonstrated the advantage of technology created by combining the abilities and experience of auto makers of two countries.

[7] After World War II the plant was returned to Mogilev and produced locomotives, steam-powered machinery, overhead cranes and oil trucks on chassis GAZ-51.

In 1958 the factory conveyor technology named S. Kirov Mintyazhmasha USSR in Mogilev was transferred to the production of single-axle tractor MAZ-529, developed at the Minsk Automobile Plant.

In 1991, MZKT was spun off into a separate company; its former parent, MAZ, continues to make a broader range of heavy vehicles.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the plant reoriented itself to produce household items (gas burners, electric motors, fans).

[17][18] The plant become well-known on 23 July 1997 as president Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko was invited to a press conference with five strategically selected foreign journalists to discuss a predicted failure which later proved true.