Luitpoldhütte
| Luitpoldhütte GmbH
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | GmbH |
| founding | 1883 |
| Seat |
 On the mountain
|
| management | Olivier Babilon, Frank Schild, managing directors |
| Number of employees | 344 (2017) |
| sales | approx. EUR 63.4 million (2017) |
| Branch | Heavy industry |
| Website | www.luitpoldhuette.com |
The Luitpoldhütte GmbH is a foundry in the Upper Palatinate Amberg . Alongside the remainder of the Maxhütte , it is the last major heavy industry company in the region. The company name (company) refers to the Bavarian Prince Regent Luitpold von Bayern , on whose 90th birthday the "Amberger Hütte" was renamed Luitpoldhütte.
history
Ore mining around Amberg
The area around Amberg was an important center for iron ore mining and smelting in the Middle Ages. The first mention of ore mining goes back to the year 1270. The most important mining area, the Amberger Erzberg, was owned by the city of Amberg until 1621. In the following years, the sovereigns in Munich succeeded in increasing their influence until in 1792 Amberg no longer had any rights. With the constitution of 1818, mining became the property of the Kingdom of Bavaria .
Relationship to Maxhütte
The beginning industrialization of Bavaria brought with it a rapidly increasing demand for iron ore. In 1853, the "Private Eisenwerk-Gesellschaft Maxhütte" was founded in neighboring Sulzbach-Rosenberg . The two companies were supposed to complement each other, but the relationship was anything but smooth. At first Amberg stopped deliveries because there were more lucrative offers, then Maxhütte opened up its own iron ore deposits and only bought from Amberg at peak times. The dependence of the Amberg mining on the Maxhütte is shown very clearly in the business year 1879: 635 tons of ore were sold, two years earlier 25,300 tons were delivered to the Maxhütte alone.
Amberger Hut
Various models were discussed in order to break the dependency of the Maxhütte. The Bavarian government refused to sell the mining to Maxhütte, but there were even plans to set up their own steel production. The Maxhütte shareholders did everything in their power to prevent this from happening, and after long discussions in the Bavarian state parliament, a middle ground was found: the construction of a blast furnace in Amberg. The groundbreaking ceremony took place in 1882, and the first pig iron flowed on September 28, 1883. This day is considered to be the founding date of the Amberger Hütte.
The business development of the Amberger Hütte was very positive in the following years and additional business areas were established. A slag brickworks was built in 1890, a gas power plant was completed in 1899 and the limestone quarry in Theuern was opened up from 1909 . In 1908 the state parliament approved the construction of a pipe and commercial foundry. A second blast furnace was put into operation on March 12, 1911 and the Amberger Hütte was renamed Luitpoldhütte in honor of Prince Regent Luitpold. Shortly before the outbreak of World War I, the third blast furnace was blown.
From 1915 onwards the production was switched to war. In 1918 the workforce had grown to 1,200 people, including around 400 women and well over 500 prisoners of war.
Luitpoldhütte AG
The political chaos and economic decline of the post-war period also affected the Luitpoldhütte. In the 1920s there were repeated strikes and protests by workers. In 1924 the management even closed the Luitpoldhütte for more than a month.
In 1927, the Luitpoldhütte, which had previously been run as an office, was converted into a stock corporation and incorporated into the newly founded Bayerische Berg-, Hütten und Salzwerke AG (BHS). The Free State of Bavaria was the sole shareholder .
The global economic crisis led to further layoffs at the Luitpoldhütte. It was not until 1937 that the Luitpoldhütte had the same workforce as it had last at the end of the First World War. While the German economy was trimmed as planned for a war economy, in 1938 BHS had to cede the Luitpoldhütte to the Reichswerke Hermann Göring Linz for 5.8 million Reichsmarks. As a result of a restructuring of the Reichswerke, the Luitpoldhütte was assigned to the Reichswerke Salzgitter .
War economy
Luitpoldhütte AG was considered important to the war effort, although it did not manufacture any direct armaments. However, the company profited greatly from its integration into the Reichswerkverbund. At the same time, it was increasingly struggling with a labor shortage. Forced laborers and prisoners of war were supposed to close the gap created by the drafting of workers into the Wehrmacht . In 1944, 616 of the more than 2,000 employees were listed as prisoners of war, which roughly corresponds to the number of drafted workers. On April 14, 1945, the Luitpoldhütte works were badly damaged in bombing raids. Around 70 employees lost their lives in the process.
Post-war period and re-establishment
The Luitpoldhütte operations were initially under American management and were spared dismantling. The BHS was able to separate the hut from the Reichswerke and in 1952 Luitpoldhütte AG was re-established with a different shareholder structure. The state-owned Salzgitter AG held 74 percent and the Free State of Bavaria 26 percent. With the economic miracle , the demand for iron products also increased. But the first weaknesses became apparent as early as the early 1960s. In 1964 ore mining was stopped, and in 1968 blast furnace operations were finally stopped. Between 1964 and 1968, 1,000 of the previous 2,300 jobs were lost. The Luitpoldhütte was mainly limited to the commercial and centrifugal foundry.
Frequent changes of ownership
In 1970 profits were still made and expansion was driven forward, also through the acquisition of companies, but only 10 years later the Luitpoldhütte was facing bankruptcy. Free State and Salzgitter AG had to inject more capital.
On October 1, 1985, the Saarbrücker Halberghütte took over 51 percent of the shares. By 1987 over 300 jobs had been cut. In 1988 the Luitpoldhütte was assigned to the newly founded Halberg Guss GmbH . This was sold to the French Valfond in 1991 . In 1994, Valfond also acquired the remaining shares in Salzgitter AG and in 1995 sold 74 percent to Novaterra .
In 2002 Farina BV and Jean-Pierre Derimay were the new majority shareholders; In 2008 the shares went to the Russian Agromash Holding. As a result, there were internal changes in the Agromash group, so that the current majority shareholder is CHAZ (Cheboksary Aggregate Works). The share of the Free State of Bavaria has remained unchanged at 26% since 1952.
In 2012 Anna Bolotina was chairwoman of the supervisory board of Luitpoldhütte AG.
In 2015, the company was in bankruptcy for several months, and on December 31, 2015, its time as a public company ended.
Luitpoldhütte GmbH
Luitpoldhütte has been a GmbH since January 1, 2016 and belongs to the OGEPAR Group. The current managing director is Olivier Babilon.
positioning
Today Luitpoldhütte GmbH is one of the most efficient foundries in Europe for small and medium-sized series with unit weights of 100 to 1000 kg. With an average of 380 employees, a production volume of approx. 60,000 t and sales of approx. 90 million euros can be achieved per financial year. The company is represented with its products in the market segments of agricultural machinery construction , off-highway vehicles, construction machinery and industrial trucks , gearbox construction , diesel engines and refrigeration and air conditioning (compressor housings).
literature
- Anne Dreesbach, Michael Kamp: The Luitpoldhütte. 125 years of iron from Amberg. August Dreesbach Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-940061-07-2 .
- Volker Nichelmann: The Amberger Erzberg and the Luitpoldhütte from 1800 to 1945. In: Negotiations of the historical association for Upper Palatinate and Regensburg. 126, 1986, ISSN 0342-2518 , pp. 99-343.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Announcement on the composition of the Supervisory Board. (No longer available online.) In: Bundesanzeiger . April 12, 2012, archived from the original on January 11, 2016 ; Retrieved April 10, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Information from the company and extract from the commercial register HRB 5785
Coordinates: 49 ° 27 ′ 56 " N , 11 ° 50 ′ 10" E