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Rheinmetall and MAN Nutzfahrzeuge form joint company for wheeled military vehicles
With the founding of Rheinmetall MAN Military Vehicles GmbH, the market for logistical and tactical military vehicles has an important new provider of complete solutions.
Rheinmetall AG and MAN Nutzfahrzeuge AG are to form a joint company for military wheeled vehicles. A contract to this end has now been signed by the two companies. The new company, which will be known as Rheinmetall MAN Military Vehicles GmbH (RMMV), is an important provider of complete solutions in the market for military wheeled vehicles, covering the entire range of armoured and unarmoured transport, command and role-specific vehicles for the international armed forces. Rheinmetall will have a stake of 51 percent and MAN 49 percent in the new company, which will be headquartered in Munich. The plan is still subject to approval from the competition authorities.
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"With this new company we are combining the strong MAN and Rheinmetall brands and the complementary technological core competencies of the two partners to form a globally operating system provider, which will present one face to the military customer with the goal of improving its position in the world market," said Dr.-Ing. Georg Pachta-Reyhofen, Chairman of the Executive Board of MAN Nutzfahrzeuge AG at the signing of the contract. RMMV unites MAN's automotive expertise in commercial vehicle manufacture with Rheinmetall's technological know-how in the military field.
"The new company follows the trend towards the joint acquisition of logistical and tactical military vehicles, whose protective and mobility characteristics have become highly similar because of current operational conditions," explained Klaus Eberhardt, Chairman of the Executive Board of Rheinmetall AG. "With their joint enterprise MAN and Rheinmetall are at the same time making an important contribution to the necessary consolidation of military vehicle systems at national and European levels," Eberhardt continued.
The first step calls for the merging of the development and sales activities of the two companies in the military wheeled vehicle sector under the aegis of the new company, which thus takes over product and market responsibility. The second contractually agreed step sees the two companies' production capacities at the plants in Kassel (Rheinmetall) and Vienna (MAN Nutzfahrzeuge) integrated into the joint company by the end of 2011.
In the initial phase, RMMV will have around 370 employees; when the second step has been completed this will increase to around 1,300 employees, whose annual turnover will amount to more than a billion euros.
About Rheinmetall:
Rheinmetall is an international technology group serving the global defence and automotive sectors. Last year its 20,000 employees generated some €3.4 billion in sales, including €1.9 billion in the defence sector.
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This makes Rheinmetall one of the world's leading suppliers of systems and equipment for land forces. In the wheeled armoured vehicle segment the company offers an extensive array of systems, ranging in weight from five to over 30 tons. Its best-known vehicles include the Fuchs/Fox of which 1,250 units are deployed by the German Armed Forces and the armed forces of a further eight nations. In 2008, Rheinmetall Defence took over Stork PWV in the Netherlands and is responsible for supplying a total of 285 units in the framework of the German-Dutch program for building the Boxer armoured transport vehicle.
Responsibility for developing and manufacturing tracked armoured vehicles and turret systems remains with Rheinmetall Landsysteme GmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rheinmetall AG. In 2009, Rheinmetall has had outstanding successes in winning major contracts for the new Puma infantry fighting vehicle and the new mortar combat system for the Federal Armed Forces as well as orders from abroad, totalling around 1.5 billion euros.
About MAN Nutzfahrzeuge:
MAN Nutzfahrzeuge Gruppe, headquartered in Munich, Germany, is the largest company of the MAN Group and a leading international supplier of efficient commercial vehicles and innovative transport solutions. In fiscal 2008 the enterprise, with over 36,000 employees, posted sales of more than 96,000 trucks and over 7,200 buses and bus chassis of the MAN and NEOPLAN brands worth 10.6 billion euros.
MAN Nutzfahrzeuge Österreich AG, headquartered in Steyr, is the Austrian subsidiary of the MAN Nutzfahrzeuge Gruppe and comprises the Business Unit Light/Medium Trucks (production of commercial vehicles in this series in Steyr) and the Business Unit Military Division (development, production and sales of military trucks, based in Vienna). MAN has approximately 4,000 employees at its plants in Steyr and Vienna plants. Sales worth 1.89 billion euros were posted in 2008.
