Piesteritz nitrogen works

SKW nitrogen works Piesteritz GmbH
legal form	GmbH
founding	1993
Seat	Lutherstadt Wittenberg , Germany
management	Rüdiger Geserick ( Chairman of the Management Board ); Andrej Babiš ( Chairman of the Supervisory Board );
Branch	Chemistry , fertilizers
Website	www.skwp.de

SKW Piesteritz from a distance with the towers of Wittenberg's old town in the background

The SKW nitrogen Piesteritz GmbH is a chemical company in Wittenberg district Piesteritz . It is one of the 50 largest companies in Central Germany. As Germany 's largest ammonia and urea producer, SKW Piesteritz produces numerous industrial chemicals on the one hand, and agrochemical specialties on the other, with an annual output of over 4 million tons . With an annual consumption of 14 billion kWh, the company is Germany's largest industrial natural gas consumer . At the location in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, the only agrochemical park in Germany, around 1,500 employees work on 220 hectares in over 30 companies.

research

The company's own research department with over 60 employees also includes the 170 hectare experimental farm in Cunnersdorf near Leipzig . This is where the company's products are tested and comparative studies are carried out. SKW Piesteritz is also a co-founder of the Agrochemical Institute (AIP) in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, a joint project with the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the Wittenberg district's economic development agency . Under this roof, professors from all natural science faculties and the Center for Engineering Sciences at MLU, various companies in the Agro-Chemical Park and the region, personal members and the Leibniz Institute for Plant Biochemistry form a research team.

logistics

The industrial location Piesteritz lies at the interface between Western and Eastern Europe. The two most important railways in East and Central Germany cross in Lutherstadt Wittenberg. One of them and federal highway 187 even cross the company premises. Over 30 kilometers of track network on the chemical site provide access to the railways. In the company's own port on the Elbe , large inland cargo ships can be loaded with solid or liquid products.

Agro-Chemical Park

The southern part of the factory premises was almost completely cleared in the early 1990s. So far, more than 30 companies have settled there, including Borealis Agrolinz Melamine Deutschland GmbH with the largest melamine plant in Germany , Louis Dreyfus with the world's largest combined biodiesel plant with oil mill and the biomass cogeneration plant of Stadtwerke Leipzig . Another 20 hectares are still available. As the largest company on the site, SKW Piesteritz continues to develop the Agro-Chemical Park as a land owner.

history

Worker in the VEB combine "Agrochemie" Piesteritz, 1988

year	Employee	sales
1990	approx 8,900
2001		approx. EUR 250 million
2002
2003		EUR 292 million
2005
2006	761	EUR 418 million
2007	720	EUR 490 million
2008	745	EUR 650 million
2009	769	EUR 462 million
2010	773	EUR 504 million
2011	785	EUR 633 million

In March 1915, the Reich Treasury commissioned the Bavarian Nitrogen Works AG with the construction of the Reich Nitrogen Works in Piesteritz.

After a very short construction period from March to Christmas 1915, the calcium cyanamide plant went into full operation in 1915/16. It was supplied with electricity from the Golpa lignite power station, 25 km away .

In 1920 the plant was privatized and the Mitteldeutsche nitrogen works AG Piesteritz was formed. VIAG was founded in 1923 as a holding company for various industrial companies, including the Piesteritz nitrogen works. In 1926 the Mitteldeutsche nitrogen works AG was leased to the Bayerische nitrogen works AG and in 1933 part of this company. Many more chemical plants were built in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

In 1945 the Red Army occupied the plant, followed by the transformation into a Soviet joint-stock company (SAG). Initially, plants (but not the entire plant) were dismantled as part of the reparations for the Soviet occupation zone with the help of prisoners of war . In 1954, the plant was converted into a state- owned company under the name VEB nitrogen works Piesteritz. In the early 1970s, two ammonia and three urea production plants were built, most of which were built by Japanese companies. As part of the formation of the combine in the GDR, the plant became the lead company of the VEB Kombinat Agrochemie in 1979 and retained this name until the fall of the Berlin Wall .

In 1990 the company was renamed nitrogen works AG. Under the management of the Treuhandanstalt , many outdated facilities were demolished in the early 1990s, existing areas were renovated, but the number of employees was also reduced from almost 9,000 to around 700. Around 3,000 jobs were retained on the factory premises through outsourcing and newly founded supplier companies.

In 1993 the SKW nitrogen works Piesteritz GmbH (SKW Piesteritz) was founded. It is not the legal successor of nitrogen works AG, but continues on the one hand the modern part of production and on the other hand the traditions of the location in the form of innovations, especially in technology and technology. The production basis remains the modern ammonia and urea complexes, the nitric acid area as well as the corresponding ancillary and logistic systems of the Nordwerk, in whose renovation and maintenance investments have been made continuously since then. Already at that time the trend was towards more highly refined fertilizer specialties . That is why the company has focused on the production of innovative nitrogen fertilizers to this day .

In 2002 the company got new shareholders: the Swiss commodity trading company Ameropa Holding and the Czech Agrofert Group took over all shares as a joint venture . The Agrofert group, whose sole owner is the industrialist and incumbent Prime Minister of the Czech Republic Andrej Babiš , became the sole owner of SKW Piesteritz in 2006.

literature

Klaus Jasche, Reinhard Müller, Michael Fuchs: Chemistry in Piesteritz - innovation since 1915 . Makowski, Munich, 2009
Sven Müller-Hilgerloh: 80 Years of Piesteritz Nitrogen Works - A history book on the chemical location . SKW nitrogen works Piesteritz GmbH, 1995
Klaus OT Beneke: Central German nitrogen works AG, Piesteritz. From the estate of the former director Richard Beneke (pictures from approx. 1920 to 1925), Uni Kiel (PDF file, November 2006).