!!!Simmering-Graz-Pauker AG, SGP

Simmering-Graz-Pauker AG, SGP, largest Austrian industrial enterprise 
manufacturing machinery, power plant equipment and rail vehicles, 
which existed under that name from 1941 to 1989. It originated from a 
factory founded in Vienna-Leopoldstadt by Heinrich Daniel Schmid in 
1831 to produce decimal weighbridges to his own designs. In later 
years the company built steam engines, plant and equipment for beet 
sugar factories and, from 1846, railway carriages, which soon became 
the mainstay of SGP's production. The plant at Vienna-Simmering was 
established in 1852. By 1899 railway carriage deliveries had exceeded 
40,000 units. The company expanded, acquired other enterprises and in 
this way broadened its product range. In 1934 Simmeringer Maschinen- 
und Waggonbaufabrik AG, as it was then called, took over Grazer 
Waggon- und Maschinenfabriks-AG (previously called Weitzer company), 
which had been founded in 1854 by Johann  Weitzer and had as many as 
1500 workers on its payroll by 1870. The company had originally 
specialised in the construction of motor vehicles of different types 
(from 1899 diesel engines under patents obtained from R. Diesel) and 
at the turn of the century had also started to manufacture 
electrically powered rail vehicles. Reorganised in 1934, when 
assembly-line work was introduced, the company employed 1600 workers 
in spite of the prevailing economic crisis. In 1941 Paukerwerke 
company, a boiler-making enterprise in Vienna-Floridsdorf, was 
incorporated into the group. Most of the manufacturing facilities at 
the company's different locations were destroyed in the course of 
World War II. Reconstruction started in 1945, and the company was 
nationalised in 1946  Nationalised Industry. Along with rail vehicles, 
the company manufactured cranes, diesel engines, presses and power 
station boilers for customers throughout the world. In the 1960s and 
1970s SGP's mechanical engineering, power station and rail vehicle 
divisions were among the most successful enterprises of Austria's  
Nationalised Industry. From 1970 it belonged to the OeIAG group ( 
Oesterreichische Industrieholding AG). In 1983 its 4500 workers and 
salaried staff accounted for sales in the order of ATS 2.9 billion. As 
the nationalised industry was restructured, SGP was divided in 1989 
into SGP-VA Energie- und Umwelttechnik (power and environmental 
engineering, along with one division of VOEST-Alpine company) and  SGP 
Verkehrstechnik GmbH (since 1996 under the name of  Siemens SGP 
Verkehrstechnik GmbH).


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