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 ÖIAG group (Österreichische 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).