Industry Defense Net income € 51,300,000 (2008) Number of employees 7,000 | Area served Worldwide Website arsenal-bg.com Founded 1878 Type of business Public | |
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Products FirearmsAir defense equipmentArtilleryMunitionsExplosivesED devicesIndustrial machinery | ||
Arsenal AD (Bulgarian: Арсенал АД) is a Bulgarian joint-stock company based in Kazanlak, engaged primarily in the manufacture of firearms and military equipment. It is Bulgaria's oldest arms supplier.
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History
The company's history can be traced back to 1878 with the first armory in the country - the Ruse Artillery Arsenal. Due to strategic concerns it was relocated in Sofia in 1891. After the nation's defeat in the Second Balkan War and World War I, in 1924 the company and all of its equipment were relocated in Kazanlak, a town situated in central Bulgaria. The armory was given the name Darzhavna voenna fabrika ("State Military Factory").
Initially producing only artillery gun components and ammunition, the factory later began to manufacture gas masks (1920s), nitroglycerin (1930s), machine tools (1940s) and finally assault rifles, optic sights and B-10 recoilless rifles (1950s). The first assault rifle, a direct copy of the Soviet AK-47, was produced in 1958. By the 1960s a total of seven factories were under the company's jurisdiction. Until the Fall of Communism in 1989-1990, the company was named Mashinostroitelen kombinat Fridrikh Engels ("Friedrich Engels Machinery Works") to conceal its activities as a military enterprise. As part of this strategy it adopted the manufacture of various civilian products, including automobiles such as the then-popular Bulgarrenault-8. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Arsenal began cooperation with companies from Japan, Sweden, Ukraine and Germany.
Currently Arsenal AD is a private company conducting international arms trade, although it also expands its civilian exports, now including high-precision metalworking machinery, mobile robot manipulators and synthetic diamonds.