Foto: Jakub Hněvkovský
Following the end of the socialist regime, the industrial giant practically collapsed: core production of steel fell to a tiny fraction of previous volumes and secondary production activities almost closed. As a result the town of Kladno, Central Bohemia, suffered from waves of layoffs.
But recently the once famous producer of high grade steel has experienced a revival, and the expansive premises of the Poldi works is now home to a range of other industries. As we approach Kladno, the scene of the enormous plant buildings and chimneys casting shadows over the fresh white snow reminds me of the 1979 sci-fi adventure film “The Secret of Steel City,” directed by Ludvík Ráža. We have come to see for ourselves the upturn in fortunes of the huge industrial complex which was formerly all part of the Poldi Kladno metal works, but which now houses other industries in addition to the remainder of Poldi steel production. At the beginning of October 2009, the partial revival of Poldi itself was confirmed with the completion of a new production hall complete with a massive forging press at a cost of around Kč 750 million (€28.6 million).
We were met at the entrance to the Poldi Hütte works by the company’s personnel manager Zdeněk Štěpánek, who first came to Poldi in 1965 as a toolmaker and lived through the transfer of the plant from state hands into the ownership of entrepreneur Vladimír Stehlík following the revolution in 1989. As a result of the problems following privatization, the Poldi plant was divided among a number of other companies. The remaining steel production was established as Poldi Hütte in 1999 by the German concern Scholz Edelstahl, which purchased the key assets of the Kladno works from the businessman Zdeňek Zemek.
Poldi Hütte now produces steel bars and hammer forgings and has around 270 employees, about 60 percent of whom worked in the former Poldi works prior to its demise. Štěpánek first took us to his office where he showed us a map of the industrial area which Poldi Hütte now owns and manages. “The site covers 62 hectares, about a third of which we use. We rent out the remaining area to more than 30 other companies. We charge relatively small rents. We’re glad that somebody is making use of the other space,” Štěpánek explains.
Štěpánek said that in 2006 and ’07 Poldi Hütte experienced a boom in demand that enabled the company to make key investments. In 2008 when turnover reached €58 million, the company began construction of the new production hall that was completed last October.
On the way to the new hall we pass through older buildings that are gems of old industrial architecture. Adjacent to the new hall, for example, stands an 80-year-old foundry with undoubted esthetic value. “When the planners surveyed the building, they found that it is in excellent condition, therefore it would make far better sense to renovate it than to demolish it and build a new hall at a cost of Kč 128 million,” Štěpánek said as we walk through the impressive construction. Our guide then pressed a button that opened a sliding door and we pass from industrial nostalgia into the futuristic setting of the new foundry hall—dominated by the tall new pressing machine and a giant machine that feeds smelted ingots into the press. It looks like a cross between a locomotive and giant metal beetle with enormous jaws that turns the ingots to the required angle. The machine is operated by a young technician sitting in a glass booth located a few meters from the press.
I am given permission to mount the steps to look into the booth. The control panel inside looks relatively straight forward to operate: a computer, a few joysticks and a couple of pedals on the floor that look like those in the driver’s cabin of a tram. The technician with his concentration focused on the press makes adjustments to the movements of the machines as required to press the red hot steel rods into the dimensions demanded by the customer.
“The average age of our employees is 46, but in the new foundry hall, the workers are considerably younger because a far more detailed knowledge of electronics is required,” Štěpánek said. Some 92 percent of the production of Poldi Hütte is exported, mostly to Germany. As a result of the economic crisis, production has been reduced by 35 percent, though in recent months demand has been picking up albeit slowly.
New neighbors
The industrial zone, once occupied entirely by Poldi, is now called Kladno-východ. Poldi Hütte’s neighbors include well-known firms such as Strojírny Poldi and Třinecké železárny but also much smaller firms such as the logistics company Bodring and Rekol, which recycles oils, and family firm Beznoska, which produces medical implants. According to the Kladno Town Hall, just under a quarter of the 500 hectare Kladno-východ industrial area is currently occupied.
An example of a new company that made clever use of the vacant space and the know-how of some of those laid off from Poldi is VP trend. Founded in 1998, the company produces plastic and aluminum door panels and is located in a space that during the socialist era served as a venue for the People’s Militia—the prime purpose of which was to “protect” industrial sites.
VP Trend produces around 15,500 door panels a year, and the company is continuing to grow despite the crisis, recording a record turnover of over Kč 90 million in 2009. The company’s owner Richard Obyt says that about one-third of his 35 employees came from the former Poldi, or Poldovka as it is known locally. “In many respects, the former company was a perfect school. Poldi guys are usually very skilled manually and are used to working in rotating shifts,” Obyt said. The technical experience of his employees and their ability to work creatively with metal has been central to the success of VP trend, Obyt said. The main machines the company uses for producing the door panels were made in-house by the work force.
One of the company’s competitors went out of business last year opening the possibility of attracting more new clients. VP Trend is now nearing the limit of its production capacity and despite several enlargements, the current premises are now barely sufficient. Therefore, this year Obyt plans to ensure the company’s further growth by building a new production facility measuring 3,000 square meters in a different area of Kladno at a cost of Kč 20 million to Kč 25 million. Obyt is keen to point out that the Poldi tradition lives on in his company. “Under socialism, Poldi remained an island of sorts of traditional working methods, both in terms of production management or overall organization,” Obyt said of the legacy from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and Czechoslovakia between the wars.
In addition to the smelting and forging of steel, the original Poldi complex comprised a range of related tertiary production activities and had a school for apprentices. The tradition of producing medical equipment was continued after 1989 by the family company Beznoska. “Our company took on all of the 142 Poldi workers from surgical [equipment] production,” the company’s co-owner Stanislav Beznoska recalls. The company also took over the premises, which required complete renovation. “We put on a new roof, new windows, we insulated the entire building from the outside with insulation boards, we replaced the elevator and renovated the cloakrooms.”
The demise of Poldovka, however, meant that the firm couldn’t source materials of sufficient quality for the production of implants locally. “These are mainly non-corrosive steels, and tool, high-speed (HS) and titanium alloys. Now it all has to be imported from abroad. Our firm lost its technical foundation, most crucially the laboratories,” Beznoska said of the obstacles the company has had to overcome. Nevertheless, Beznoska now exports to a long list of countries and holds several patents.
Despite private firms successfully developing from the heritage of the once giant state enterprise, there remains a definite bitterness among the local population about the fact that the state let Poldi collapse in the 1990s. “The people of Kladno to this day cannot forgive the people who made the decisions back then,” Obyt said. “I’m convinced that for the most part Poldi was viable after the revolution and that there was demand for most of its production. Let me recall an episode that was symbolic. At the end of the 1990s, I got work in a Western European engineering company and they had a small supply of original Poldi carbon steel. The boss had it carefully stored away and everyone except for him was strictly forbidden from giving it out,” Obyt recalled, adding that for a long time nobody in Kladno could actually believe that Poldi could collapse. “And it came to that. Only now does it seem that something is rising from the ashes. And that’s good.”
The revival of the local industry is not only about work opportunities. Of Kladno’s population of 70,000, up to 10,000 work in the Kladno-východ industrial area, new workplaces have opened at the new industrial area to the south, and around 14,000 commute to Prague.