End of the road: Astara Philippines will be shutting down

Curtain call for the distributor of GAC, Peugeot, JMC and JAC

So it appears the dream is ending for a once-promising multi-brand automotive distribution company that handled GAC, Peugeot, JAC, and JMC.

For the last few months, there have been rumors swirling in the industry regarding the situation of Astara and the brands under its wing. Peugeot has been languishing in brand limbo, as problems with Stellantis have made ordering difficult (and expensive), JMC models have the lackluster specifications for the price, JAC unit rollout has been delayed, and GAC China has made overt moves to establish a local brand office, going so far as to introduce a new brand team at a recently concluded event.

There’s only so much that a company can do given such challenges, and now they’re making it official: Astara Philippines will be closing shop in January 2026. That closure means an end to 4 years since they arrived as Berge Auto and became the first European-owned (Spanish) multi-brand automotive distributor in the country.

While there is a forthcoming official press release from Astara Philippines, the reasoning will undoubtedly be softened. But to make it clear: the business case for Astara isn’t making sense anymore.  

Astara had achieved success with the Peugeot brand with attractive pricing at the start. In 2022, under Astara, Peugeot was able to notch 620 unit sales versus 161 the previous year. The same goes for the rise of GAC following the drop of Geely. Pre-Astara, GAC was able to sell 418 units in 2022, but in 2023, it saw a sharp rise to 1,943 units and then to 3,207 units in 2024.

Astara was unable to sustain the sales performance for both of those brands. GAC was caught out by the sharp growth of the hybrid and EV market, and was rapidly overtaken by BYD. Peugeot was caught out by aftersales issues; one customer went so far as to reach out to me personally via social media to ask if I could help with their aircon compressor issue, as Peugeot dealers did not have any in stock. The problem is that they had a hard time ordering parts.

These are but snapshots of what has been going on, but given the challenges (birthing pains, really) with JAC and JMC, the only logical decision was to cut, and cut clean.

So what happens to the brands and the customers under Astara? For the brands, Astara is currently in the process of figuring out the next steps. GAC is already resolved: the OEM will take over, as they have already established a local office. Peugeot is unclear, but we expect that there are already negotiations taking place to hand off the distributorship to another company. As for JMC, that may also be the case. As for JAC, well, there may be another thing being cooked up, but we will have to wait.

We reached out to Astara regarding the matter. They said that while the impending closure of Astara Philippines is unfortunate, they stressed that customers and stakeholders will be the top priorities. They want to ensure that the transition to new distributors per brand will be smooth and seamless for customers.

"We’re committed to making sure that our brands and clients are taken care of," Dong Magsajo, Media & Public Relations Head, Astara Philippines.