KraussMaffei was formed in 1931 from a merger of the two
Munich firms of
Maffei (founded 1838) and
Krauss & Co. (founded 1860). Both belonged to the leading German makers of
locomotives of various types. Maffei also built other steam-operated vehicles and later manufactured vehicles with combustion engines, including locomotives, trolleybuses, and
buses through the 1950s. The headquarters of the firm remained in Munich. During
World War II KrausMaffei used thousands of prisoners of war and concentration camp internees as forced labor at its Munich-
Allach plant to produce military equipment. Major products made there included the
Sd.Kfz. 7,
Panzer I Ausf. C and
Panzer I Ausf. F. KrausMaffei had produced injection moulding equipment since 1957. In 1964 the company Eckert & Ziegler GmbH was taken over. In the 1960s, KraussMaffei built several examples of the
ML 4000 C′C′ diesel-hydraulic locomotive for demonstration and testing on
American railroads.
Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad and
Southern Pacific participated in the tests, but both found that the locomotives were unsuitable for service in the rugged
Rocky Mountains which both companies required. KrausMaffei was a major tank manufacturer. In 1963, the company started production of the
Leopard tank. Development and production of
Leopard 2 tank began in 1972 in cooperation with
Wegmann & Co. The "tank family" comprised not only main battle tanks, but also combat engineering vehicles, air defense tank
Flakpanzer Gepard, self-propelled howitzer
Panzerhaubitze 2000 (PzH 2000), as well as reconnaissance and transportation vehicles. More than 10,000 armored vehicles based on Leopard tanks were produced since the 1960s. In the 1970s, KraussMaffei were involved in the development of the
Transrapid magnetic levitation train. In 1986 the plastics equipment division was separated and became Krauss-Maffei Kunststofftechnik GmbH.
Mannesmann acquired majority share of KraussMaffei in 1989, and bought out the remaining shares in 1996. In 1999 KraussMaffei merged with
Demag to form the
Mannesmann Demag Kraus-Maffei. In 1999 the defence component was spun off and merged with Wegmann & Co to become
Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW). Co-operation between companies was already well established, with Wegmann supplying tank turrets, among other things. After the acquisition of Mannesmann's telecommunication business by
Vodafone in February 2000, Mannesmann group was dissolved. KraussMaffei's locomotive production and defense division Krauss-Maffei Wegmann were bought by
Siemens AG. In 2000 Krauss-Maffei Kunststofftechnik GmbH took over the KrausMaffei
trademarks following dissolution of Mannesmann Group. In 2016, KraussMaffei (by then only a plastics manufacturer) was purchased by
ChemChina. In November 2018 KraussMaffei was the victim of a
ransomware attack, leading to severe drawdown in the production. After the transaction, ChemChina held a good 60 percent of the shares, another Chinese sovereign wealth fund around 15 percent, and the rest was free float. At the same time, production in
China was stepped up: In addition, the ChemChina majority holding Qingdao Tianhua Institute of Chemistry Engineering (THY) took over a ChemChina plant in
Sanming, which builds injection molding machines for the Chinese market. KraussMaffei planned to cut 510 jobs worldwide by 2023, most of them in Germany, as the company reported in early 2020. ==References==