The German arms company Rheinmetall is planning to buy the Alstom factory in Kassel. According to information from the French newspaper La Lettre, the management of the railway technology group Alstom has been holding informal discussions with Rheinmetall about the location for months.
The round 950 Alstom employees were only informed about the possible sale via a notice in April. Since then, there has been uncertainty about the buyer and the future of the work. A works meeting at the beginning of June also failed to provide any clarity. The works council and employees demanded that locomotive production be maintained.
The suspicion, that the management in France now wants to decide the future of the plant on its own, seems to be confirmed. The Alstom factory is located right next to Rheinmetall's tank factory in the Mittelfeld industrial park and would offer the group an optimal opportunity to expand capacity. According to its own information, Rheinmetall wants to build the largest tank factory in Europe in Kassel.