A German armaments manufacturer wants to build a tank factory in Ukraine to be close to the customer. What could possibly go wrong?
Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from the German-language service of the Epoch Times. The translator’s comments are in square brackets:
Close to consumers: Rheinmetall wants to open a tank factory in Ukraine
The Ukraine war gave the German armaments industry a strong economic upswing. Now the traditional German company Rheinmetall is planning to build a tank factory in Ukraine.
The armaments group Rheinmetall is negotiating the construction of a tank factory on Ukrainian soil. “A Rheinmetall plant can be built in the Ukraine for around €200 million,” said company boss Armin Papperger to the Rheinische Post (Saturday edition). It could produce up to 400 Panther-type main battle tanks annually. The talks with the Ukrainian government are “promising”. Papperger hoped for a decision “in the next two months.”
The Rheinmetall boss was convinced that the plant could be protected against Russian air raids. “Anti-aircraft protection would not be difficult.” [Against their hypersonic Kinzahl missile? Yeah, right.]
The Ukraine needs 600 to 800 tanks for a victory, stressed the Rheinmetall boss. In order for the quantity to come together, the construction of new tanks would have to start quickly. “Even if Germany gave up all of the 300 Leopard 2 tanks available to the Bundeswehr, that would still be far too few.” [And half of those don’t work because the lack of spare parts.]
According to the current status, Rheinmetall is making around 250 tanks available in connection with the Ukraine war: “We are working at full speed,” said Papperger. “We have already made more than 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles operational; by the end of the year there will be around 100. Around 30 tanks are ready out of 50 Leopard 2A4s. In addition, there are around 100 older Leopard 1 models, of which we can make 88 usable again from today’s perspective.”
Papperger expects the war to last “probably for years to come.” “Although the Western Allies are sending enough weapons there so that Ukraine can defend itself, the Ukrainians do not have enough equipment today to completely reconquer their territory.” At the same time, Russia does not have as many resources as the West as a whole, the boss of Rheinmetall said. But he couldn’t see “that the leadership around Putin is making cutbacks in its aggressive course towards Ukraine.”
Rheinmetall is included in the Dax
In addition, Deutsche Börse [German Stock Exchange] announced on Friday that the armaments group Rheinmetall would be included in the leading German index Dax. The Düsseldorf-based company will replace the dialysis specialist Fresenius Medical Care AG in the first German stock exchange league from March 20th. FMC then descends into the index of medium-sized stocks, the MDax. Rheinmetall currently has a market value of more than €10.8 billion. The share price has almost doubled since the Russian invasion of Ukraine a little over a year ago. [Just like with the Plandemic, keep it going — who cares how many will die? After all, that’s a big part of the plan, isn’t it?]
With around 29,500 employees, 15,000 of them in Germany, Rheinmetall is Germany’s largest armaments group. The company has added jobs over the past year. Business is booming. The economically positive perspective is also due to increasing demand from other NATO and EU countries. A Rheinmetall spokesman recently said that the Russian invasion of Ukraine had “again ensured stronger and faster demand”. “We have years of strong growth ahead of us.”
Companies in the armaments industry are also striving for inclusion in the MDax: the armaments electronics manufacturer Hensoldt replaces the biofuel manufacturer Verbio. In addition, the technology group Jenoptik replaces Software AG.
Afterword from the translator:
Here we go again — Panzerlied (German WW2 Tank Song)
And the Russian government will simply sit back and wait patiently for this factory to be built? Yeah, right. That shows that these people have no interest in peace. Why would they? It’s against Profit.
This doesn’t make any sense except as some kind of grift.
No way the war would last long enough for a tank factory to be built, let alone start producing tanks and thats assuming energy is available to power the machinery; the Russians have shown themselves to be particularly adept at knocking out the Ukrainian energy grid whenever they feel the need to do so. Why not build a plant in Poland and drive the tanks across the border, or better yet, just utilize the ones already in Germany?
No energy in Germany to turn the lights on. They will soon be in the dark.
Rheinmetall won’t put a tank factory in Poland for the simple reason the Germans and Poles do not trust each other, so that will never happen, they do have tank factories in Hungary and Switzerland under license, as for energy, they have their own energy plants of hydro and coal which is off the rest of the grid. As for putting a tank factory in Ukraine? The chance of that happening is nothing but talk. I will say this though, owning a lot of stock in Rheinmetall has made me a ton of money. Hint, start investing in oil/gas and various specialized military equipment manufactures.
Sometimes, I have encountered a specific kind of “large corporation troubles” – when the large corporation has plenty of money, too many chiefs, and not enough indians.
It goes like this: They hire dozens of incompetent teams, thinking “the more people we hire, the more production we shall have!” – and they end up with literally zero production, and dozens of expensive teams on payroll.
It’s some kind of “ivory tower” stuff, I have seen it multiple times. And the core of that problem may be that the management class thinks that “human resources” are just some kind of interchangeable goodies, and you can exchange that old human resource for a new human resource like when you change tires on your electric scooter.
I know this might be a bit off topic, nevertheless – to build a tank factory near the front just smells like that kind of management, who plans everything in their excell sheets – “if we invest x amount of euros we can expect y amount of profits, and we base our calculations on data from that factory we have build near Rhine river…”
They won’t build a plant in Ukraine, it’s all talk and speculation to gain interest, Rheinmetall has their own hydro and coal plants that are not on the grid, just to power their own factories.
It could be something like a Babylon Bee story but I don’t attribute it to them. I am just saying checks the boxes.