RENK Group AG

RENK makes the parts that turn power into motion, and it has done so from Augsburg since 1873. The company sits in an odd commercial position. Almost nobody outside the industry knows the name, yet if a Western tracked combat vehicle moves, there is a good chance a RENK transmission is doing the work, and the same applies to a surprising share of the world's frigates and destroyers. More than seventy armed forces use its drivetrains. Triton took the business private in 2020 and floated it again on the Frankfurt exchange in February 2024, where it trades as R3NK. Revenue reached about 1.4 billion euros in 2025 across roughly 4,400 staff and eleven manufacturing plants in Germany, the United States, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, France and India, with guidance for 2026 above 1.5 billion.

The group reports in three segments. Vehicle Mobility Solutions is the largest and the most defence heavy. Its core is the HSWL family of hydromechanical power shift transmissions with integrated superposition steering, a design that lets a tracked vehicle turn by varying track speed through the gearbox rather than braking one side. The HSWL 256 drives the Puma infantry fighting vehicle and the British Ajax family, the HSWL 295 and its EVO derivative cover the fifty to seventy tonne class at 800 to 1,200 kilowatts, and the HSWL 354 sits in the Leopard 2. Around the transmissions the segment supplies final drives, suspension and track tension systems, hybrid and fully electric drive modules, drive-by-wire controls, and AVDS-1790 diesel engines. It also builds test rigs, a business run through RENK Test System since 2004, covering automotive, rail, aviation and defence suspension testing.

Marine and Industry covers naval and commercial propulsion. Single and dual engine gearboxes, special marine gearboxes, shaft generators, marine clutches, hybrid and electric propulsion trains, marine bearings and onboard power grids go into frigates, corvettes, submarines and merchant hulls, and international frigate programmes have been the main driver of order intake in recent quarters. The same division sells turbo gear units for turbines and compressors, including helical, planetary and integral designs, vacuum gearbox systems and variable speed drives, alongside heavy industrial gearboxes for mills, extruders and hydropower plants, plus a full coupling range covering gear, flexible disk, torsionally flexible and safety types. Slide Bearings is the third and smallest segment, making hydrodynamic bearings for turbines, generators, electric drives and large rotating machinery. It has had the hardest few years, tracking a weak industrial cycle while the defence side ran hot, which is the clearest illustration of how differently the three parts of this company behave. Aftermarket work threads through all three. A transmission fitted to a tank in the 1980s is still being overhauled, and the spares and service business that comes with a fifty year platform life is a steadier earner than the original equipment orders that produce the headlines. That long tail is also why RENK keeps showing up on export programmes where the customer never speaks to it directly, because the vehicle prime specifies the drivetrain and the end user inherits the relationship.