List of the 500 largest mechanical engineering companies Germany [2024]

List of the 5 largest mechanical engineering companies in Germany

After the automotive industry, mechanical and plant engineering is the second German key industry. The industry represents a good million jobs. More than 6,500 – predominantly medium-sized – companies are active here. We present the five largest mechanical and plant engineering companies in Germany:

1. Siemens AG, Munich

Siemens is a technology group of international standing and one of the largest German companies. Around the world, some 385,000 people work for the company. Mechanical and plant engineering at Siemens takes place in various fields. Turbines, generators, transformers and compressors are special machines and typical Siemens products. In addition, Siemens supplies technical solutions for mechanical engineering companies, for example systems for digitizing machine processes.

Update 2023: Siemens is currently devoting itself to another field within its sustainability strategy, specifically in the area of the green hydrogen economy. Together with the cooperation partners, Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale and SENCO Hydrogen Capital GmbH, hydrogen plants of 5 to 15 megawatts are to be developed. Overall, the focus is on accelerating the industrial transformation and diversifying the energy supply. The first concrete projects are planned for 2023.

2. ThyssenKrupp AG, Essen

ThyssenKrupp AG was formed in 1997 from the merger of the two long-established steel groups Thyssen and Krupp-Hoesch. The Group continues to focus on the steel sector. ThyssenKrupp has around 162,000 employees worldwide. Alongside steel production, ThyssenKrupp is also active in industrial plant construction. This is assigned to the Industrial Solutions unit. Here ThyssenKrupp supplies major plants and plant components for the chemical, fertilizer, mining, steel and cement industries.

Update 2024: Green steel will be an important topic for ThyssenKrupp in 2024. This refers to climate-friendly steel that is produced in plants powered by hydrogen. Initial measures in this direction have already been taken and the company has announced major efforts in this area (together with the German government).

3. GEA Group AG, Düsseldorf

The GEA Group is the successor to the former Metallgesellschaft and has five business segments: Separation & Flow Technologies, Farm Technologies, Liquid & Powder Technologies, Food & Healthcare Technologies and Refrigeration Technologies. GEA employs over 18,000 people and operates worldwide. The company supplies plants, plant components and machinery with a focus on food production and processing. Other customers include the chemical industry, healthcare companies, the pharmaceutical industry and sports and leisure companies.

4. Enercon GmbH, Aurich

Enercon in Aurich in East Frisia is fully geared to renewable energies. Founded in 1984, the company specializes in wind turbines. It is owned by a foundation – initiated by company founder Aloys Wobben. Enercon builds wind turbines worldwide and has over 14,000 employees. This makes Enercon one of the most renowned mechanical engineering companies in Germany. In addition, there are business activities in the fields of hydropower, seawater desalination, ship transport and crane technology.

5. Krones AG, Neutraubling

Krones, headquartered in Neutraubling (Bavaria), is a leading company for packaging machines in the food industry, and for filling lines. The company employs 16,000 people, 11,000 of them in Germany. Its turnover recently stood at just over 4 billion euros.

Picture source: Ant Rozetsky via Unsplash (20.06.2023)

This information is included in the list

• Company name
• General contact data (address, e-mail address, telephone number, URL)
• Name of the management
• Serial letter suitable for addressing the management (e.g. “Dear Dr. Müller”)
• Sales figures for the years 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015 (taken from the annual and consolidated financial statements)
• Employee figures for the years 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2018 (taken from the annual and consolidated financial statements)
• Sector classification & Field of activity

Note: If the sales and employee figures are not included in a company’s own financial statements but in the parent company’s consolidated financial statements, the data from the respective consolidated financial statements are provided.

Picture source: amin khorsand via unsplash (21.06.2023)

These German industrial sectors are covered by our list

• Production plants, production systems and production engineering
• Machine tools (CNC machines, automatic lathes, woodworking machines, etc.)
• Filling and packaging machines
• Construction machinery and agricultural machinery
• Conveyor technology, automation systems and storage systems
• Energy systems
• Environmental technology, disposal machines and waste water treatment

Picture source: ThisisEngineering RAEng via Unsplash (20.06.2023)

Statistics based on the ResearchGermany datasets

The ResearchGermany database of German mechanical engineering companies covers all areas (production plants, machine tools, construction machinery, conveyor systems, etc.) in the entire Federal Republic. Thanks to the extensive data set, we are able to publish interesting statistics. In the following, we present the distribution of the mechanical engineering companies from our list by federal state and city in clearly arranged graphs. On request we are also able to provide individual evaluations.

Distribution of the headquarters by federal state and by city

As expected, Baden-Württemberg leads the list of federal states with the most mechanical engineering companies. Many hidden champions and world market leaders from the mechanical engineering industry are based in the “Ländle”. Baden-Württemberg is followed in the ranking by Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia.

Home of many technology companies and even startups it’s not surprising that Munich leads the list when looking at the cities. The capital of Bavaria is followed by the famous seaport city Hamburg at the second place and by Düsseldorf as the third.