The Rheinmetall Group is examining the conversion of sites in Berlin and Neuss to armament production. Elsewhere, the company has already switched to grenade cartridges.
The Rheinmetall Group is examining the conversion of civilian production sites to the manufacture of military components. As the company explained on Monday, ammunition or mechanical components for military requirements could be manufactured in Berlin and Neuss, for example. The plants belong to the ‘Power Systems’ division, which includes products in the fields of air and heat management, electromobility and hydrogen technology.
Rheinmetall is Germany’s largest armaments manufacturer. A spokesperson confirmed the plans to convert sites for military production to ‘nd’ in the first week of February – an anti-militarist group had previously got wind of this. ‘In the defence business, we are currently using every opportunity to increase the number of units, particularly in the ammunition sector,’ the company explained.
In some areas, this transition is already a reality. At a civilian Rheinmetall site in Germany, cartridges for artillery shells have been produced ‘for some time’, which are then further processed by the ‘Weapon and Ammunition’ department, said the company spokesperson. However, no explosives are processed at the plant in question.
A final decision as to whether ammunition will also be produced in Berlin and Neuss has not yet been made, however. According to Rheinmetall, the company has presented a concept to the workforce according to which the plants would be transferred to the weapons and ammunition division and thus become ‘hybrid sites’.
Rheinmetall apparently wants to compensate for the decline in productivity in the automotive industry with this reorganisation. The civilian business recorded a slight decline in sales last year, while the military division was able to increase its sales by a good two thirds to €1.55 billion in the same period – mainly due to business in the Ukraine war. Overall, the Group’s turnover rose to €6.2 billion. ‘We are experiencing growth like we have never seen before in the Group,’ Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger told the Reuters news agency.
‘The plans for the Rheinmetall site in our neighbourhood show that the production of armaments is currently a great way to make money,’ says Ruth Sperber from the “Hands off Wedding” network to “nd”. The increasing normalisation of war and armament goes hand in hand with massive cuts to civilian services of general interest such as education, health and social security.
Despite ongoing peace talks on the war in Ukraine, shares in defence companies remained in high demand at the start of the trading week, with Rheinmetall recording particularly strong price gains. The new US administration’s increasing distancing from European partners and its increased demands on NATO member states to increase their defence budgets are raising further expectations. ‘For our Group, this will probably mean that we will have to drive our growth even more strongly than originally assumed,’ explains CEO Papperger.
Rheinmetall is not the only company to reorganise civilian production facilities. The Franco-German tank manufacturer KNDS recently took over the plant of the railway technology group Alstom in Görlitz, which was on the brink of closure. Rheinmetall had also already offered 100 employees at Continental’s loss-making brake plant in Gifhorn the opportunity to move to an ammunition factory. The defence electronics manufacturer Hensoldt is also interested in taking on employees from Continental and Bosch who are threatened with losing their jobs.
Published in German in „nd“.
Image: The Rheinmetall headquarter in Düsseldorf (Dacse, CC BY-SA 4.0).
