Neftekamsk Automotive Plant (NefAZ, ) is a Russian manufacturer of buses and machinery on KamAZ chassis located in Neftekamsk in Bashkortostan.
History
On 25 December 1970, the Council of Ministers of Construction issued an order that a "plant for the production of dump trucks and winches" would be built in Neftekamsk. The USSR's Minister of the Automotive Industry approved a similar resolution on 8 January 1971 and constructions started on 13 July 1972. The first KamAZ-5511 ten-ton dump truck was assembled on 15 April 1977 and mass production began on 11 October. The State Commission approved the plant to produce trucks on 31 October. Bus production began in 1981. The 100,000th KamAZ-5511 was finished on 19 May 1982. The factory became the Open Joint Stock Company NefAZ in 1993. The plant began developing large capacity city buses in August 2000 and presented the first large urban bus, the NefAZ-5299, on 6 December. A restyled version was produced in 2004 and a low-entry version was released in 2007. In 2005, NefAZ sold 1,156 buses. Since January 2007, the company has worked with Dutch firms DAF Trucks and VDL Groep on bus production. The company was affected by the Great Recession and had to reduce production technology. They began downsizing the number of employees, going from 11,399 on 18 July 2008 to 9,588 on 13 July 2009.[1]