| Eurometaal | |
| Industry: | Small Arms, Munitions, Explosives |
| Location Country: | Zaandam, Netherlands |
Eurometaal was one of the leading ammunition producing companies of the Netherlands.[1] Its headquarters were in Zaandam.[2]
Originally, Eurometaal was an industrial military complex that set up camp in Zaandam around 1900, and adopted the name Eurometaal in 1973.[3] Eurometaal has developed weaponry for the Royal Netherlands Army from NR20 C1 hand grenades to tanks.[4]
In the nineties, an employee of the hand grenade factory in Liebenau revealed that their grenades were used in the Kurdish-Turkish conflict, which created a PR nightmare and led to the shutdown of the factory in Germany in 1993. The arms created in Germany had transited through the Netherlands before being delivered to Turkey, amid a German ban on arm trades with Turkey.[5]
Eurometaal was a producer M864 and M483A1 projectiles. It also had the licence to produce American DPICMs that it was producing both in Zaandam (since 1989) and in Turkey through a partnership with MKEK (since 1994). This production stopped in 2002.[6] Following the European defense conversion program, Eurometaal successfully diversified its activities to gear to civilians, by laying off hundreds of employees and acquiring existing civil companies.[1]
In 1999, Rheinmetall increased its stake in Eurometaal to 66%. In 2002, Rheinmetall sold Eurometaal's subsidiary Intergas (manufacturer of furnaces and boilers) and closed Eurometaal altogether.[7]