Heckler & Koch
Assault rifles, pistols, machine guns and 40 mm grenade systems
Heckler & Koch has made small arms in Oberndorf am Neckar since 1949, on ground where the French occupation authorities had just finished dismantling a Mauser works. The company that Edmund Heckler, Theodor Koch and Alex Seidel registered that December was arming the Bundeswehr within a decade. The G3, adopted in 1959 and developed from a Spanish CETME design, ran past seven million rifles and was built under licence in at least fifteen countries. Somewhere between 1,100 and 1,250 people work for the firm today, with plants and offices in Columbus, Georgia, in Nottingham and near Paris. Revenue reached 393 million euros in 2025 and order intake almost doubled to 802 million. Control sits with Compagnie de Developpement de l'Eau, a Luxembourg holding that is now held indirectly by Nicolas Walewski. The listed vehicle, H&K AG, trades on Euronext Access in Paris under MLHK, with a free float of 0.03 percent.
The Military & Law Enforcement register splits into pistols, submachine guns, assault rifles, machine guns, designated marksman rifles and 40 mm systems. Assault rifles carry the business. The G36 has been the Bundeswehr standard since 1995 and is now being replaced by the G95, the German name for a variant of the HK416, the short-stroke gas piston rifle that also became the French Army's HK416F and the US Marine Corps M27. The HK417 does the same job in 7.62 mm, the HK433 folds G36 and HK416 features into one modular weapon, and the HK437 in .300 Blackout went to German special forces as the G39. Submachine guns run from the roller-delayed MP5, still the reference weapon for police units half a century on, to the 4.6 mm MP7 personal defence weapon and the UMP. Pistols cover the striker-fired SFP9, the P30, the HK45, the USP that gave the Bundeswehr its P8, and the Mark 23 built for US special operations. Machine guns run from the legacy MG3 through the 5.56 mm MG4 to the MG5. The G28 marksman rifle became the US Army's M110A1, and the 40 mm line covers the GMG grenade machine gun, the GLM launcher module and the HK269 under-barrel launcher.
Procurement has gone the company's way lately. Haenel won the German assault rifle competition in September 2020, the award collapsed a month later over a patent dispute, and Heckler & Koch took the contract in early 2023 for up to 118,718 G95A1 and G95KA1 rifles. In July 2026 the Bundeswehr exercised a raised ceiling of 250,000, and the firm is putting more than 230 million euros into capacity to build them. France ordered 93,080 HK416F rifles under the Arme Individuelle Future programme in 2016, Norway fielded 51,000 HK416 variants, and Lithuania took MP7A2 submachine guns in 2024. Some tenders go elsewhere. The British Army picked Knight's Armament over the HK416A5, and in December 2025 the German Army chose a Czech pistol to replace the P8. The Hunting & Sport register sells civilian semi-automatics, the MR223 from the HK416 and the MR308 from the HK417. A Stuttgart court convicted the company in 2019 over G36 rifles shipped to police in Guerrero, Mexico on false end-user paperwork, fined it 3.7 million euros, and the Federal Court of Justice upheld that in 2021.
- Assault rifle design and series production
- Submachine gun and personal defence weapon design
- Service and special operations pistol design
- Belt-fed machine gun development
- Designated marksman and precision rifle development
- 40 mm grenade launcher and grenade machine gun systems
- Cold hammer forged barrel and receiver manufacture
- Fleet-scale small arms production ramp and industrialisation
- Civilian semi-automatic derivatives for hunting and sport
7.62 mm roller-delayed battle rifle adopted by the Bundeswehr in 1959 and licence-built in at least fifteen countries.
5.56 mm assault rifle, German standard issue from 1995 and still widely exported.
Bundeswehr designation for the HK416-derived rifle replacing the G36, in G95A1 and short-barrelled G95KA1 forms.
5.56 mm short-stroke gas piston assault rifle, the basis of the G95, the French HK416F and the US Marine Corps M27.
7.62 mm battle rifle sharing the HK416 operating system in a larger calibre.
Modular 5.56 mm assault rifle combining G36 and HK416 design features.
Compact .300 Blackout carbine adopted by German special forces as the G39.
9 mm roller-delayed submachine gun, the long-standing benchmark for police and special forces units.
4.6 x 30 mm personal defence weapon for vehicle crews, protection details and special forces.
Blowback submachine gun offered in .45 ACP, 9 mm and .40 S&W.
Striker-fired 9 mm service pistol, sold in the United States as the VP9.
Hammer-fired 9 mm police service pistol with an adjustable grip frame.
Polymer-framed .45 ACP service pistol.
Universal self-loading pistol family, the origin of the Bundeswehr P8.
45 ACP offensive handgun developed for US special operations as the Mk 23 Mod 0.
7.62 mm general purpose machine gun in German service since 1959, now being retired in favour of the MG5.
5.56 mm belt-fed light machine gun, originally presented as the HK MG43.
7.62 mm general purpose machine gun replacing the MG3 in Bundeswehr service.
7.62 mm semi-automatic designated marksman rifle, the basis of the US Army M110A1.
7.62 mm semi-automatic precision rifle developed for police marksmen.
40 mm belt-fed automatic grenade machine gun firing at around 340 rounds per minute.
Grenade launcher module, the single-shot 40 mm family used standalone or under a rifle.
Single-shot 40 x 46 mm low velocity under-barrel grenade launcher developed from the GLM.
Semi-automatic civilian rifle derived from the HK416 for the hunting and sport market.
Semi-automatic civilian rifle derived from the HK417 in 7.62 mm.
Programs & Platforms
Oberndorf am Neckar, Germany
Ownership
Publicly traded · Euronext Paris: MLHK