The island that the factory would come to be situated on was located between two waterfalls on the Narva (Narova) River overlooking the city of Narva (Narwa). The area was part of Sweden until being captured by the
Tsardom of Russia (Muscovy) in 1704, during the 1700–1721
Great Northern War. Only one small sawmill was located on the island throughout the 18th century as a wealthy local German merchant family owned the island and used it as a vacation retreat. A German merchant made an unsuccessful attempt to start a wool manufacturing business on the island during the 1820s; it was dissolved in 1831.
Ludwig Knoop, purchased the island of Kreenholm for 50,000 roubles from the heirs of a local merchant Sutthoff. The manufacturing company was founded a year later in 1857 by Knoop, along with initial investors
Kuzma Soldatyonkov,
Aleksey Khludov, Gerasim Khludov, Richard Barlow, and Ernst Kolbe. It was listed as a joint stock operation initially made up of 400 shares at 5,000 roubles each, valuing the company at 2 million roubles. The charter was approved by
Tsar Alexander II on July 23, 1857. A new spinnery was built on the island in 1870, and the company bought the adjacent Georgiyevsky Island in 1872 and built another mill there in 1899. The company also purchased Joala Manor and converted it into a mill in 1884, expanding it in 1890. Professor
Gerhart von Schulze-Gävernitz visited the mills in the 1890s stating that "the whole place is a bit of England on Russian ground." Others were Germans and Russians.
The strike of 1872 There was a
cholera outbreak within the factory that started spreading amongst workers on 21 July 1872. The following morning there was a government inquiry into what had occurred over the previous two days. Soldiers continued to arrest workers who had been instigators through Friday, 15 September 1872. Upon withdrawal of the military troops at the end of the week, the governor gave orders to reorient the local police and security organisations to better respond to issues at the factory, usurping the factory police chief and essentially dissolving its force. The district
mangericht held a special session from 18 September to 28 September 1872 in order to review the criminal actions of the strike, 29 workers were indicted. Kreenholm dominated the local economy in Narva during this time. In 1903 the company produced satin, lustrine, muslin, and batiste. Before
World War I, this mill employed 10,400 people and manufactured 17,500 thousand tonnes of yarn and 75 million meters of fabric annually, which amounted to roughly 10% of the cotton cloth production in the empire. In 1921 there were only 1,453 employees Although the mill was forced to reduce its workforce and decrease the overall production, the company was soon able to enter into other foreign markets and enjoyed commercial success in the independent Republic of Estonia during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1939, the factory had 2,736 employees. The Nazi German army captured Narva on 18 August 1941, and would go on to use it to supply the Nazi German war effort. When the Soviet Army recaptured Narva on 26 July 1944, the city had been destroyed, the mill had become inoperable and damages caused to it were worth up to an estimated 250 million Soviet roubles. Nevertheless, the Stalinist authorities decided to restore the factory "in order to serve the Soviet Union". From 1981 to 1985, Kreenholm went under a restructuring that increased outputs and improved working conditions. In 1985, Kreenholm was one of three enterprises selected in Estonia to experiment with exporting products outside of the USSR and entering foreign markets. This increased Kreenholm's investments and product offerings, leading to a peak of 4 million dollars in exports in both 1989 and 1990. After Estonia restored its independence in 1991, Kreenholm had to go through a difficult transition while entering the global
market economy. The national government founded the Kreenholm Manufacturing State Enterprise to help renew production.
21st century In 2000, Kreenholm's sales reached a market economy time peak at 1.24 million kroons. The company exported 86% of its production in 2001 with the majority of it going to EU and US markets. In 2002 the company employed 4,900 people. In early 2004, the company had 4,600 workers, of which a further 400 were laid off in April 2004. During this time, the
World Bank recommended that the company would need to cut down its labor force to 3,800 to avoid financial crisis. Amidst the layoffs, Narva trade unions held a silent protest outside of the Kreenholm headquarters. Despite the troubles, the company was able to stay afloat due to financing received from Estonian banks and the
International Finance Corporation. there were about 500 people employed when bankruptcy was declared, along with 9.5 million euros worth of debt still belonging to the manufacturer. By 2012, the company chairman stated that it would be "absolutely impossible" to restore the previous scale of operations. There are currently plans to build a manufacture cultural quarter in the Kreenholm site. ==In fiction==