At the start of 2025, Andre Kuhn, the CEO of the steel supplier, Kuhn Edelstahl, turned down a multi-million-dollar deal. Three years into the Ukraine War, Kuhn was approached with two projects to produce components for guided weapon systems and tank guns: a long-term business worth millions.
He declined.
‘I can't do it,’ Kuhn said. ‘Fortunately, my son and co-owner Calvin and my partner in the management, and co-owner Andreas Willim share my opinion on this.
‘I cannot use the resources of our company - the energy, creativity, ideas, and skills - to produce something whose primary and only purpose is to kill other people.’
‘I find the idea of seeing a destroyed building with dead people and one of our products at the center of this suffering unbearable. I still don't understand how and why people can and want to kill other people again and again,’ he says.
Kuhn is sticking to his proverbial guns despite the arms industry, particularly in Germany, investing massively in capacity expansion, creating a promising and very profitable market.
As an entrepreneur, he is by no means proud of this.
‘We could even be accused of “hiding” behind the companies and our competitors who will produce these components in our place. We want safety in Germany and Europe, but we are not prepared to take the necessary steps to achieve this.
Today Germany is facing new challenges, he says. He believes that Germany must remain capable of defending itself in the middle of Europe and needs to quickly and extensively restore the barely existing deterrent effect of our Bundeswehr and its allies.
‘We recognize that the dark days of armed threats are not over. The possibility of armed conflict is real. German soldiers are stationed in the Baltic states and could soon be helping to secure the Ukrainian border with Russia,’ he says.
‘We need superior offensive weapons to be able to credibly prevent any military strike against NATO,’ he argues.
These, however, will not be coming from Kuhn directly.
While the company has taken the stance that it does not supply products directly used in weapons of attack, they have wondered if they need to rethink this from today's perspective.
‘The production of military equipment is in a ‘gray area’ right from the definition,’ explains Kuhn.
The firm itself currently sits in this ‘gray area’, he says.
Nonetheless, Kuhn’s cylinder liners are installed in large diesel and gas engines, including those of its client MTU Friedrichshafen, which produces German tanks.
The firm’s highly complex components for submarine masts are supplied by its customer Gabler Marine Technology to shipyards worldwide based on German export licenses. They supply submarines with air, data, and energy or are used in a classic way as an extension mast for the famous periscope.
‘Until now, however, we have always clearly refrained from manufacturing products that are used directly in weapons and whose primary purpose is to destroy objects or kill people as efficiently as possible,’ says Kuhn.
‘It is a decision of conscience - questionable, worthy of criticism, and, in this day and age, also dubious. A decision that we still cannot make any other way, even in this day and age,’ he says.
Source: https://familienunternehmer-blog.de/wollen-wir-produkte-fuer-die-ruestungsindustrie-herstellen/
