NISSAN bosses have denied that plans to invest millions of pounds in its Russia plant will cost jobs in the North-East.

Exports of the Qashqai model – the company’s most popular European car – have been key to the recent success of the Japanese car maker’s Sunderland plant, which last year smashed production and sales records.

Last year, North-East workers made 301,000 Qashqais, with more of them exported to Russia than any of the company’s other overseas markets.

Moving production to Russia would, however, help the manufacturer to avoid the 30 per cent import duty it pays and support its target for at least 80 per cent of its cars sold in Russia to be locallyproduced by 2016.

An announcement last week that Nissan was set to invest about £130m in its St Petersburg factory to double production of the Qashqai prompted motor trade analysts to speculate that the Sunderland plant would suffer.

But with the site running at capacity and the electric Leaf car soon to start production, Nissan said it was time to shift some of the production of the Qashqai overseas to free up space for the new models it will start building in the next few years.

“The Qashqai has been a real success story for Nissan and, at times, demand was so strong we couldn’t make enough of them,” said a Nissan Sunderland spokesman.

“But it would be wrong to assume that moving some production to Russia will hold us back here – far from it. We need the additional capacity to make Leaf on that line.

“We will continue to produce Qashqais for markets around the world as well as start making several new models.”

The firm is to build its new family hatchback in the North-East from 2014, creating more than 1,000 jobs, and from next year the company will produce a compact car – provisionally named the Nissan Invitation – creating 400 jobs.

To support the new line, a recruitment drive has just been launched for 200 workers, including vacancies for production managers, engineering and maintenance staff.

“These are good, well-paid jobs and we expect to get a lot of applications,” a spokesman added.

Details of the jobs can be found at the careersatnissan.co.uk website.