Accumulator factory (Hanover)

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Operations building in Hanover-Marienwerder under the name Johnson Controls ;
in March 2008

The accumulator factory in Hanover , at times also called Accumulatoren-Fabrik und Akkumulatorenwerk Hannover-Stöcken or Akkumulatorenwerke Hannover-Stöcken , has been a production site for batteries and accumulators , especially for automobiles, on the industrial site of Stöcken - Marienwerder since the 1930s .

history

The accumulator factory near the north port of Hanover , also known simply as the battery in the vernacular , was the second branch of the Akkumulatoren-Fabrik AG (AFA), which had been producing industrially since 1888 in what is now the North Rhine-Westphalian town of Hagen , and which later became internationally known under the name VARTA . In the large factory built on around 90  hectares during the Nazi dictatorship from 1938 until the Second World War , the production processes ran on one level. Instead of the originally planned lead-acid drive and starter batteries for various vehicles, drive batteries for submarines and torpedoes were produced from the war year 1940 . For this purpose, prisoners of war , foreign workers and concentration camp inmates were obliged to do forced labor , who were housed in the Neuengamme concentration camp , the Hanover-Stöcken concentration camp , which was specially built directly on the factory premises .

During the air raids on Hanover , the battery factory was hardly damaged by war, so that starter batteries for the British occupation troops could initially be produced in June 1945 . Nevertheless, from 1946 onwards it was dismantled .

In the post-war period , after the production processes had been modernized from 1950 onwards, the “battery” helped to an economic upswing due to the increasing motorization in the wake of the so-called “ economic miracle ”: As early as 1959, around 2000 employees were producing a product portfolio made up of starter batteries, motorcycle and other small batteries , which - after the AFA was renamed VARTA in 1962 - was supplemented by dry batteries in 1964 .

In 1966 the headquarters of the company - under whose roof the manufacturing locations Hagen, Hanover and Ellwangen operated as an independent GmbH - was initially relocated from Hagen to Frankfurt am Main and, in 1969, also to Hanover. In the meantime, the holding company has been involved in a variety of production fields outside of pure battery production.

View of the industrial site near the north port on the Mittelland Canal ;
in March 2008
Porter's house, car barrier and "security" vehicle at the entrance to the company premises

At the beginning of the 1990s, VARTA began extensive restructuring, as a result of which the previous department store structure as well as various plants in Germany and Scandinavia were given up. From 1992 the company cooperated with Robert Bosch GmbH and formed - under the majority management of VARTA - a joint venture for both the production and sale of car batteries under the name VB Autobatterie GmbH. But VARTA began to dissolve a little later in 1995: The loss-making industrial batteries division was sold to the British BRT group by the major shareholders of the Quandt industrial family and Deutsche Bank , and the Hagen company where it was founded was closed. In 1998 VARTA Plastic was handed over.

At the end of 2000, 92% of the shares were taken over for almost 300 million euros from a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank called DB Investor and passed on to Gopla GmbH , to which Deutsche Bank holds 39% and the two previous main shareholders from the Quandt family 25.1% were involved.

In 2001 the microbattery division was spun off, and the resulting Varta Microbattery became a subsidiary of Varta AG in Hanover.

In the summer of 2002, Varta's two largest work areas were sold. First, the majority stake in the field of portable batteries was given to the battery manufacturer Rayovac . A week later, the cooperation partner Johnson Controls bought the 80 percent of Varta in VB Autobatterie GmbH with Robert Bosch GmbH for 312.5 million euros and thus the largest area. Varta had 1,700 employees and around 130 million euros in sales in the microbattery sector. See also VARTA AG .

However, the manufacture of the car batteries on the former VARTA site in Hanover continued under the name Johnson Controls.

In mid-November 2018, Johnson Controls (JC) announced the sale of its then highly lucrative battery division “Power Solutions” to a Canada-based investment group under the leadership of Brookfield Business Partners as part of a “strategic upheaval” . For the purchase price of 13.2 billion dollars, a change of ownership is announced by the end of June. The sale affects around 1,300 employees in the Hanover plant, which at the time was only one of JC's 50 battery production sites with a total of around 15,000 employees. In addition to a research and development department with around 25 employees, Hanover also has the control center from which business in Europe, Africa and the Middle East is managed with a total of around 3,500 employees. According to works council chairman Andreas Scherer, however, the sale did not threaten to cut staff in Hanover.

At that time, however, the further use of the trademark rights was still open: While “the Varta brand should remain untouched”, the continued use of the JC brand as the world market leader in car batteries was still unclear; Around a third of all car batteries were produced at Johnson Controls at the time, with a market share of around 80 percent for new vehicles alone. At the end of 2018, JC-Werke was still producing all Bosch brand batteries.

Literature (selection)

  • Heino Esser (arr.): Report. VARTA Batterie AG , Hanover: Schlütersche Publishing House
    • Volumes 1–4: 100 years of VARTA. 1888-1988. Stories of History , 1988
    • Volume 5: 100 years of the VARTA company health insurance fund. 1889-1989 , 1989
  • VARTA. New concepts 1991 , Hanover: VARTA Batterie AG, public relations [1991]

Web links

Commons : Akkumulatorenfabrik Hannover  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Waldemar R. Röhrbein : VARTA Batterie AG. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 638; Preview over google books
  2. ↑ a b o. V .: Hannover-Stöcken (Accumulatoren-Fabrik) , article on the page kz-gedenkstaette-neuengamme.de [ undated ], last accessed on November 19, 2018
  3. ↑ Ulrich Bauche (Ed.): Accumulators Factory Hannover-Stöcken , in ders .: Work and Destruction. The Neuengamme concentration camp 1938–1945. Catalog for the permanent exhibition in the document house of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, branch of the Museum for Hamburg History , 2nd, revised edition, Hamburg: VSA-Verlag, 1991, ISBN 978-3-87975-532-5 and ISBN 3-87975-532 -9 , p. 212; Preview over google books
  4. ↑ Christoph Ernst, Ulrike Jensen (ed.): Hope died last. Reports from survivors from Neuengamme concentration camp , Hamburg: Rasch and Röhring, 1989, ISBN 978-3-89136-267-9 and ISBN 3-89136-267-6 , p. 60; Preview over google books
  5. ↑ aktiencheck de AG: Varta plastics business sold (ad hoc) | News | aktiencheck.de. Retrieved January 26, 2020 .
  6. ↑ a b VARTA sells car battery business. In: Handelsblatt. August 6, 2002, accessed January 26, 2020 .
  7. ↑ a b Ralph Hübner: New owner for old Varta / Johnson Controls separates from battery division. Works council in Hanover is not worried. Article in the daily newspaper Neue Presse on November 14, 2018, p. 22

Coordinates: 52 ° 25 '3.3 "  N , 9 ° 37' 48.8"  E